Commanded by Jesus
In this sermon, we explore the Great Commission as outlined in Matthew 28:19-20 and Acts 1:6-8, emphasizing its significance as a command rather than a suggestion. Pastor DJ challenges us to recognize that the primary command is to make disciples, not merely to invite people to church or share theological debates. We are reminded that as followers of Christ, we have a responsibility to actively engage in evangelism and disciple-making wherever we go.
We also address common myths surrounding the Great Commission, such as the belief that it is only for church leaders or that one must know everything about the Bible before sharing their faith. Instead, we discover that every disciple of Christ is called to be a witness, sharing the gospel message in their everyday lives. Pastor DJ encourages us to overcome barriers like fear of rejection and lack of training, emphasizing that we can all participate in fulfilling the Great Commission by simply sharing our personal experiences and the core message of the gospel with others.
Key Takeaways
- The Great Commission is a command to make disciples, not a suggestion; our primary responsibility is to actively engage in evangelism.
- Every disciple of Christ is called to share their faith, regardless of their level of biblical knowledge or training.
- We must overcome common barriers to evangelism, such as fear of rejection and the belief that it's solely the church's responsibility.
- Making disciples involves sharing the gospel message and teaching others to observe Christ's commands, not just inviting them to church.
- As we go about our daily lives, we are called to be witnesses for Christ, sharing the good news wherever we are.
Scripture References
Discussion Questions
- What does it mean to you that the Great Commission is a command rather than a suggestion?
- How can we practically engage in making disciples in our everyday lives?
- What barriers do you face when it comes to sharing your faith, and how can we support each other in overcoming them?
- In what ways can we create a culture of evangelism within our church community?
- How does understanding our role as witnesses change the way we approach conversations about faith?
Transcript
· I'm Brandon Hoffman, I'm Jenny Hoffman, and we've been coming to Cross Church for four
· and a half years.
· When we moved here four and a half years ago from the East Coast, nothing felt like
· home.
· Once we found Cross Church, our kids got involved with the youth ministry, they started
· getting involved in different programs and activities, helping out with Vacation Bible
· School, even the Esther Club program, our oldest daughter who's now 22 years old
· living in Virginia, started helping out, working with kids and loving on them, sharing
· with them, telling about Jesus, and our youngest daughter who's now a senior in high school
· has picked up that mantle and has continued on.
· Two words to describe how the church has made me feel is love and accepted.
· Being accepted into the children's ministry program and just loved on every week by
· the staff is super important just to make you feel welcomed and accepted.
· So thinking about being challenged, like Brandon said, you know, we're challenged as a couple,
· being leaders in the church, making sure that we're reading the scripture and really
· living it out every day and so that we can be good leaders and witnesses for God.
· And it's just, it's really neat to be able to settle in a church, feel like
· whether it's a Tuesday afternoon in your living room or a Sunday morning in service,
· the people you see, the people you interact with are your family.
· Maybe not blood, but they are laughing with you, they're praying with you,
· they're sharing stories, you're having lunch together, telling about events that
· happened this past week. It's just, it's truly a blessing to be able to have a
· church family our whole lives, then lose that and realize how much it meant to us,
· and then find a new church in Cross Church that has filled that void for us.
· All right, amen. Welcome. Welcome to Cross Church Phoenix. I am Pastor DJ. I'm the
· pastor here at Cross Church Phoenix, and I want to invite you to open your Bibles to
· Matthew chapter 28, and we'll be at verse 19. And if you're visiting with us this morning,
· welcome. We are in the middle of our sermon series through the Great Commission,
· and we have been, we are also launching a two-year discipleship program,
· discipleship journey, I should say, called Let's Go. And we're looking forward to seeing
· how God uses this to grow us and shape us into who He wants us to be.
· And so if you're wondering, what is Let's Go? What is this whole thing? There's,
· we have a lobby display in the back with more information. A few weeks ago, we shared a vision
· video from our lead pastor, Jackie, and that's available online for you as well. But
· Let's Go is our church's response to the Great Commission. Our series theme has been
· fulfilling the Great Commission one church at a time. And we believe that God is calling
· church to be a beacon of light. One time it has been shared that we are turning into the Motel 6
· in the church world and are striving to keep gospel lights on because the truth is we live
· in a time where churches are closing all across America. And that is fact. It's not just kind of
· it. It is a fact that churches are closing all over the place and we can't keep all of them open,
· but we strive to keep as many as we can. Some of them are being sold and turned into bars
· or apartment complexes, stuff like that. Gospel lights are going out. And at Cross Church,
· as you see plastered all over our church, we're about making Jesus known. And God has
· positioned us to be a church ready and passionate about keeping other church doors open.
· And our prayer is that you'll join us in this endeavor by engaging with our Let's Go mission.
· So you may have seen these floating around, these commitment cards. I would highly encourage
· you to snag one and pray over it. Our main goal is 100% engagement by all who call Cross
· Church their home. The amount, I don't want anything to do with. I don't want to know that,
· but we do believe and I preach and teach that giving is an act of worship and obedience.
· That's not my opinion. That's God's word. So I will stand on that. But I want to invite you
· to snag one of these on your way out and pray over it. In two weeks, we will have
· a commitment Sunday where we come, lay our commitment cards at the altar and dedicate them
· to the Lord. So that will be Sunday, March 29th during our morning services. But I ask
· that you would pray. Pray about your involvement with the Let's Go discipleship journey.
· Also, we are accepting and we need Easter candy donations. So if you look in the far back,
· there's a yellow sign with a bucket. Easter candy donations we are taking. And also,
· you may have seen these in each chair. These are our Easter invitations. So I
· am challenging you to snag yours in your chair. And then there's more in the baskets on your
· way out. Grab a few and pass them out, hand them out, invite people to church for Good Friday
· and Easter Sunday. And with all that being said, let's go to the Lord in prayer before we begin.
· Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your love and grace and mercy.
· Pray now that you would help us, Lord, with all the things going on
· in and through Cross Church and with the season coming of Holy Week and
· as we reflect upon the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ that
· you would help us, God, to just take a minute to slow down in this moment,
· this Sunday morning as we come under the word of God. Pray that you would give us eyes to see,
· ears to hear what the Spirit has to say to the church here at Cross Church of Phoenix.
· In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I will ask you if you are able to stand with us as we read
· God's word together. And if you're unable to, that's fine. You can stand with us in spirit.
· That is perfectly fine. But I'm going to read Matthew 28, 19, and 20, and then
· a couple verses from Acts chapter 1. Matthew chapter 28, verse 19, Jesus says,
· 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 everything I have commanded you
· and remember I am with you always to the end of the age.
· And Acts chapter 1, verses 6 through 8 says, So when they had come together, they asked him,
· Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them,
· It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority,
· 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.
· Thank you. You can be seated.
· Last week, if you were here, if not, it's online, but we focused in on the authority
· of Jesus Christ because that lays the foundation for the Great Commission. Jesus
· lays that foundation himself. Before he gives them commands, he reassures them and tells them
· who he is, which is Lord, right? The Savior, the risen Jesus Christ,
· and he has all authority in heaven and on earth. And so when Jesus says, Go, therefore,
· you may have heard this. It's a common little cliche in Bible interpretation, but
· if you see the word, therefore, you can ask yourself what? What's it? Therefore, right?
· And therefore, Bible writers will use that term to refer back to what they previously said as
· they make a current point. So Paul will do it sometimes in Ephesians chapter four, right? After
· everything I said in one through three, which is all doctrinal, he says, Therefore, I urge
· you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, right? Because of all
· of this, do this. And Jesus is doing the same thing. Therefore, right? Because I have all
· authority in heaven and on earth, this is what you should go to. Remembering that it's all
· about my authority, not your own. So having established last Sunday that Christ has all
· authority, and we walk through the Gospel of Matthew pointing that out, the question now
· this Sunday as we set this up is simply this. So are we submitted to his authority?
· As we come to the meat of the Great Commission, it's easy to read it, agree with it, love it,
· say amen to it, and yet never actually do it, right? So to help us see the Great Commission
· for what it is, I want us to work through a few myths and facts about the Great Commission. So
· if you have a handout among all the other things that are back there, there's also
· handouts, sermon handouts on the tables in the back. You can grab one. If not,
· you can just simply follow along. But that is the heading we're working with
· this morning, myths and facts about the Great Commission. So our first myth is this,
· it's the great suggestion. It's the great suggestion. And sometimes the Great Commission
· is treated like it's the great suggestion. When the truth of the matter is fact, number one,
· it's the great command. The great command. There are two commands in the entire Great
· Commission. Neither of them are the word go, which might be surprising, right? Like wait a
· minute, go, it wouldn't that be, it is part of it, yes. But the first command or in the
· original languages, right, Greek, it would be the imperative. I like to call it the knife hand.
· You know, if you know, if you know the knife hand, like this is the command, right?
· The first command in the Great Commission is make disciples. It's two words in English,
· but one in Greek. Make disciples is the command. We are commanded to do that.
· The second command, if you're curious about it, is in verse 20.
· And it's the word remember. Or some translations will say behold or lo, I am with you. The
· in the CSB, remember, that is actually in the imperative. All that means is it's a command.
· So if you put it together, we are commanded to remember that Christ is with us as we obey also
· the command to make disciples. It's great. Jesus says don't forget. Keep it in mind.
· Remember I am with you. Be active in your remembrance of that, right,
· as you are active in making disciples. But the bottom line is this. We must be about the
· business of making disciples. Notice that the Great Commission does not say go and make
· converts, which we want, right? We do want people to come to Christ. I'm not minimizing
· that. But if somebody gets saved and we say congratulations, you've arrived. There's nothing
· left for you to do. Just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you'll die and go to heaven.
· We're not fulfilling the Great Commission then.
· It doesn't say go invite people to church so that the pastor can make them a disciple.
· It doesn't say be an apologist. Go and be an apologist having all the answers to every
· question anyone could ever possibly come up with. It also doesn't say go and start another
· podcast, right? Go and do this. Go and do it. And yet it's those things that often
· dominate Christianity. Even among mature Christians, mature Christians will fight
· secondary issues while ignoring primary issues.
· And the primary command here is to make disciples. And so you say, well, how do we do that?
· At its most basic element, we do this by spreading the message of the gospel wherever
· we go. We often think that the command is the word go. And that is not true. The commands
· are make disciples. And remember, go is a participle in Greek. And I know that this is
· not English class, but a participle is like adding ing, right? So to run is a verb.
· Running would be a participle, like the running man. It's describing what he's doing.
· And so, of course, the word go, the implication is that the disciples need to go places in
· order to fulfill the command to make disciples. They don't need to sit around and wait for
· magically appear in front of them. That's true. But the word go is actually going.
· It's more of a, if you could think about it, as you're going, make disciples. Or wherever
· you're going, make disciples. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
· Therefore, going, make disciples, baptizing, and teaching. The reason it gets translated
· is go helps us understand it. If he said, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on
· earth. Going, therefore, it's a little bit different. It's go, therefore, to help us
· understand it. Yes, but it would literally be going, therefore. And if you look at the words
· baptizing and teaching, it's the same thing. Those are participles. So there are three.
· It's going, baptizing, and teaching describe how we obey the command to make disciples.
· So when we've gone to someone, witnessed to them, and they respond to the gospel,
· what do we do? Well, we baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
· and proceed to teach them to observe the commands of Christ. That's making a disciple.
· But it all starts with permeating our city with the message of the gospel. And those that we go to,
· those that we witness to, may not end up attending our church. Maybe you share the gospel
· with someone, they get saved, and they plug in somewhere else. That's fine. But our sister,
· if you remember, our sister Tanya, who was here at 9 a.m., she got saved at Charlie
· Kirk's Memorial. Had nothing to do with Cross Church Phoenix. She just got saved at
· Charlie Kirk's Memorial, found our church, and has been here ever since. And what was
· our response to that? What did we do? Well, we baptized her and proceed to now teach her
· everything Christ commands. And the same is true for all of us. Every single one of us,
· if you call yourself a Bible-believing Christian, you need to be baptized. It's a command
· from Christ and then be taught everything else, right? Be taught what he is commanded.
· That is for all of us. And I want to point that out because oftentimes we might think
· that we have to get people to come to church before we can share the gospel with them.
· And that's not true. Evangelism is much more than a church invitation, though church
· invitation is good, right? We want an invite culture here. That's why we have handouts,
· invitations for Good Friday, and invitations for Easter, and opportunities to come give those
· out. We are and want an invite culture, but obeying the Great Commission at its most basic
· level is sharing the gospel message with other people. And you can make Jesus known to them
· before they step foot in any church. That's the point. Church attendance is a byproduct of
· getting saved, yes, but it is not a prerequisite to getting saved. But sometimes we treat it like
· that, and it's not. I did some research on how many Christians share the gospel,
· and so the following is your Google AI overview, right? So you can decide how
· worthy that is or isn't, but they base it off of their findings and research.
· But here you go. I'm quoting them. It says this quote, while many Christians believe
· in the importance of evangelism, a low percentage actively share their faith.
· Studies show that only five to 25 percent of Christians actively share the gospel,
· while some data suggest that 91 to 95 percent have never shared their faith verbally.
· And then, as these Google returns always do, it gives you additional findings,
· common barriers for it. So common barriers include fear of rejection, lack of training,
· and a belief that evangelism is not their personal responsibility. Those are your top three
· barriers to evangelism. And then they give you key findings. It is pretty amazing what
· they can do, but key findings on Christian evangelism in a bold heading, right? General
· reluctance. Approximately 47 percent of Christians are reluctant to share their faith.
· Shifting responsibility. The belief that evangelism is a personal responsibility
· dropped from 89 percent in 1993 to 64 percent in 2018.
· With more Christians believing, it's primarily the church's job to do it.
· That means that over the last approximately 30 years, 25 percent more Christians don't
· believe personal evangelism is necessary and that the church is solely responsible to do it all.
· And then their last little heading here, frequency of sharing. In a six-month period,
· less than half, 46 percent of self-identified Christians shared a Bible verse or story,
· 43 percent invited someone to church, and only 38 percent explained how to become a Christian.
· So what that means is about one-third of Christians can explain to someone else how
· to become a Christian. One of the sources for this was an article by Barna Group in 2018.
· They wrote an article called this, quote, sharing faith is increasingly optional for
· Christians, end quote. Interesting, right? Sharing our faith is becoming increasingly
· optional. More and more optional as the years go by. And to that I say,
· may that not be true of this church. But we must ask ourselves, how are we doing?
· In the last six months, or maybe six years, would you, would I, would we say that we're not just
· acknowledging Christ's authority, right? Saying yes and amen to verse 17.
· I'm sorry, I'm saying yes and amen to verse 18, but ignoring verse 19 and 20.
· Are we acknowledging Christ's authority, or are we also truly coming under it by obeying
· the Great Commission? How many times have we intentionally given the gospel message to someone
· in the last six years, let's say, or six months, whatever time frame you want to use
· to evaluate and reflect? Here at Cross Church Phoenix now, one of my missions is to destroy
· the top three reasons we don't share the gospel. If you remember what they were,
· it was fear of rejection, lack of training, and a belief that evangelism is not their
· personal responsibility. Well, what we learned last week, right, we have nothing to fear
· because Christ has all authority in heaven on earth. We offer evangelism training now,
· which helps us address the lack of training that did exist. And after this sermon, we all know,
· hey, it's our personal Christian responsibility as a disciple of Christ.
· And I know that we will still struggle with some of these things, fear of rejection
· especially, but also lack of training and this belief that it's not our personal responsibility,
· but we have to work against that. And this leads to our second myth, myth number two,
· it's a Great Commission reserved for church leaders. It is a Great Commission for the
· pastors and the elders, right? As your pastor, I am called to feed the sheep. I am called to
· feed and minister to the church. My job is to shepherd and guide and teach and preach to feed
· you and not let you starve of biblical truth. This statement has been made by many a pastor,
· so this is not original to me, but I subscribe to it. I refuse to starve sheep to entertain goats,
· okay? However, I do preach to unbelievers. I do pray that they will get saved. That's
· not the point. But the point is I am failing my job if I am not equipping you to go out
· and do ministry. My biblical primary job is to equip the saints of the church for the work
· of the ministry. That is my primary job. If you look at it in Ephesians, I believe it's chapter
· six. It's four, five or six in the practical portion of Ephesians, right?
· He says what he gives pastors and teachers and evangelists to do what? To equip the
· saints for the work of the ministry. So this leads me to fact number two. It's a great
· commission for all disciples of Christ. All disciples of Christ. And just because I'm
· the pastor doesn't mean I'm exempt from personal evangelism, which does convict my own heart.
· I am a disciple of Christ in need of the body of Christ in the ministry of this church just
· as much as anyone else. I'll share this personal story of what happened this past week. I had
· some Jehovah's Witnesses come over to my house and didn't knock on my door. I had my garage
· open. So I was in the garage and I saw them arrive and I believe I recognized one. They
· came in a group of four kind of splitting up two by two and knocking on doors. So I knew that
· they would come. And I've talked to, I believe one of them before, but I have talked to them
· before others. And they're so steeped into it that oftentimes talking to them only makes it
· worse. They're so ingrained. So I told myself, I know they're coming. They're going to
· invite me to the Kingdom Hall over here for Easter stuff. And so they show up,
· smiles on their faces, hand me the thing and walk away. And I didn't say anything.
· And I watched them walk to neighboring houses and God was like,
· why don't you say anything? So I took note. They park, you know, what they'll do is they'll
· walk about halfway down the block, do the block and then leave. And so they were parked
· not right in front of my house, but across from my house. So I could see it. And I was like,
· well, when they come back to their car, I'll initiate a conversation with them. And so they
· came back and I did. And I got to talking to this lady and this one lady began the
· conversation with me. I said, Hey, let me just ask you one question. Do you believe the
· Bible? She said, yes, we do. I said, okay, if I could prove to you that Jesus is God
· from the Bible alone, using Bible verses alone, not my commentary on it, just the
· scriptures and letting them speak for themselves, would you believe that? She said, no.
· So I'm like, you don't believe the Bible then. Well, yes, I do. Right. Well, no, you don't.
· But she was curious. And so she said, I would not believe it, even if you could prove it
· from the Bible, but I'm curious. Like, how would you? Right. So I took her to some passages
· that are clear, right? Basically, Jehovah's Witnesses make God a liar. Okay. In the
· besides me, there is no savior. And what happens when Jesus is born in Luke chapter two,
· the angel Gabriel says, friend to you, is born in the city of David. What? The Savior,
· who is Christ the Lord. They have to break the scriptures to make it make sense, right?
· They make Yahweh a liar. They make Luke a liar. They make the angel Gabriel a liar.
· Everyone's a liar to make their theology work, right? Matthew's a liar because he's
· a manual God with us. Well, no, he's not, right? And they've never been able to give
· an answer to these. This is Isaiah, Hosea mixed together. And then if you bring it together with
· Luke, they have to say, well, Yahweh said he was the only savior, but then he made
· another one. So he's like, my bad guys, I was the only savior. I made another one now for
· Isaiah. His name is Jesus. And it's just false teaching. Well, a gentleman gets out of the car
· who's the angrier one, could tell that I was opposing this lady in her theology.
· And he gets out and he comes up to me and he says, you know, Isaiah nine verse six,
· I said, yes, I do. Isn't that great? Our Christmas verse, right? Unto us a child is
· given. His name shall be called the wonderful counselor of the mighty God. And he stops right
· there. He's like, yeah, mighty God. He said, Jesus is mighty God. Yahweh, Jehovah is all mighty
· God. I was like, you're going to stake your eternity on that. And I said, could you finish
· that verse for me please, sir? And he wouldn't, right? Well, no, I just want you to know
· Jesus is mighty God, not the almighty God, which is bad hermeneutics and bad theology. We can
· talk about that later, right? But I said, could you please finish that verse? And then
· I just did it for him. He will be called the wonderful counselor of the mighty God
· and everlasting father and Prince of peace, by the way. How do you make that work?
· You just admitted this is a verse pertaining to Christ, and yet you refuse to acknowledge
· that he's one with the everlasting father. That's what he refuses to acknowledge,
· and he has to break the scriptures in order to do it. Well, he huffed and puffed,
· and I thought he might blow my house down, but he didn't. But he got home. He went back
· into his car and left. But he said one thing to me before he walked away. He said,
· look, DJ, right? Look, we're the only ones fulfilling the great commission. Until you
· knock on my door, don't tell me about making disciples of Christ.
· And I said, you know, unfortunately, there's some truth to your statement.
· And I told them that I was pastoring a church and that we're trying to flip that,
· right? And be more active in the neighborhood, train our people to do evangelism,
· be about spreading the gospel. But we should be out there, because cults are.
· They're less ashamed of their bad theology than we are of our good theology.
· We can't let them have a monopoly on street neighborhood evangelism. We can't.
· But they're out there more than we are.
· And so all that's to say, the pastor must be about sharing the gospel truth as well.
· Let's move to our third myth, myth number three. I must know everything about the Bible
· before I can obey it. This is part of that fear of rejection, right? A lot of Christians
· are scared of what they'll be asked. A lot of us are worried that if we can't
· answer every single possible question thrown at us, then we won't be a witness. But
· that's not true, nor should it be our approach, which leads to our third fact.
· Fact number three, you are to be a witness, not a seminary professor.
· Nothing wrong with seminary professors. I just, you know, I can pick on them.
· I went to seminary, so hey, here you go, right? And I learned a lot there.
· But you don't need to know Greek and Hebrew to share the gospel.
· It can come in handy. The gentleman who is mad at me as a Jehovah's Witness said,
· DJ, fine. Where's the verse that teaches? What's the first verse that teaches
· the Trinity? And I said, I'm glad you asked. It's the very first verse of the Bible,
· Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, God, he's like, it just says God. It's Yahweh.
· I said, it is Yahweh. Isn't that great? But it's Elohim. I'm like, do you know Hebrew,
· brother? He's like, no. I was like, so do you know what Elohim means? He's like, no.
· I was like, okay, why are you outpedaling this then, if you don't have a clue what it says?
· Elohim is the plural form of the word El, like El, a singular God. Like El Shaddai would be God
· Almighty. So it would be like describing attribute of God, right? El Shaddai. Elohim
· is the thrice plural form of that singular noun. So it is a conundrum. But you have El,
· Eloah is the dual, right? And Elohim is the thrice plural. But it is a noun, singular noun.
· So it does kind of kind of blow your mind, right? But that's the point. In the beginning,
· God, Elohim created heavens and the earth. And he said, what? Let us make man in our image.
· Who else is there? I don't know. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's who's around.
· In the beginning, but it's Elohim. But Greek and Hebrew help. But you don't need to know that
· to share the gospel, right? What matters is can you share basic elements of the gospel,
· explaining sin, what it is, disobedience to God, anything that is not up to his standards,
· and show people that their sin separates them from our holy and just God who must punish sin.
· That's what hell is, right? And then share the good news that Christ came. He is a manual God
· with us and he lived a perfect life. He's fully God and he's fully man. He committed no sin
· and yet he went to the cross and he died on the cross for his own sin. No, he had none
· for our sin. He bore our sins, as Peter says, on the tree. And he died and he didn't stay
· dead. He rose on the third day just as he said he would, and he offers eternal life to all who
· will receive him, to all who will repent, to turn from their sin, and put their faith and
· trust in Christ to forgive their sin, be reconciled to God through Christ, the only
· one who can save them. Can you share the basic elements of the gospel? It's a challenge,
· right? I have talked to a few people who are like, I know what I believe. It's not just in my head,
· it's in my heart. I know what I believe. It's so hard to articulate. That's all right. We can help
· you. We can help you. Can you share a three-minute testimony of your own salvation,
· what God has done in your own life? It's a good challenge, right? Two, three minutes.
· You don't have to get up and preach at someone for an hour telling your whole life
· story, but can you put together a couple minute testimony is another good challenge. And these
· don't require seminary degrees. What does it require? Faithfulness to the obedience
· of the gospel requires faithfulness to be a witness. That's what Acts 1 describes us as,
· witnesses. A witness in a courtroom is what? A witness. He's not the prosecutor
· and he's not the defense attorney. You're a witness. What does a witness do? Well, in a courtroom,
· what's a witness going to do? Give testimony, right? Bear witness to what they've seen,
· heard, and experienced. That's what we're called to be. God's not telling you to be
· his prosecutor. He will judge, right? The living and the dead, 2 Timothy 4.1.
· You're not called to be his defense attorney. He was perfectly fine without you. He'll be
· perfectly fine after you, right? He needs you. He's called you to be his witness.
· Acts 1a doesn't say go and be, but you will be my seminary professors to the ends of the
· earth. No, you will be my witnesses through the power of the Holy Spirit. We will be
· his witnesses. And I want to save this for the end here because we're providing
· two opportunities for you to do this coming up. Mark your calendars if you have note or piece of
· paper. On March 28th and April 4th, both of them are Saturdays. March 28th and April 4th.
· Saturdays at 6 30 p.m. We're going to be going out to pass out flyers
· for Good Friday and Easter as well as doing any evangelism that we can.
· And we will be meeting here at the church to start right with prayer
· before we go out and then we'll meet back here.
· It's just an open invitation to come do what God has, what Jesus has commanded us to do.
· And if you can't make it, it's not the only opportunity, right? I'm sharing this to say
· you're invited to and we would encourage you to come, right? But the point is whether or not
· you come on the 28th of the 4th, the point is will we obey the great commission and make disciples
· wherever we're going, as we're going in our daily life? The command isn't the word go.
· Like some people are like, well I can't go to Africa. Some people are called to go to
· Africa as missionaries. You may not be. It's as you're going. Where does God have you?
· I got bills to pay and I work at this place. Okay, be his witness however you can. I know it gets a
· little dicey in work situations, so that's fair. But I'm just saying as you're going in the
· neighborhood he has you in, be a witness. In the workplace he has you in, to the extent that
· you can, be a witness. In the family he has you in, be a disciple maker. Be about the gospel.
· It's not the great commission isn't commanding you to go to the unreached people group in
· Africa. God will call his people to do that, but you are called to make disciples where you are,
· wherever you are going.
· I want to invite the worship team up as I close with a simple benediction.
· I've enjoyed finding these and blessing our church with them.
· This one is 1st Timothy 6, 13 to 16. And Paul says to young Timothy there at the end of the letter,
· he says, I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus
· who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession to keep the commandment
· unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,
· which he will display at the proper time. He who is blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings
· and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one
· has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. Let's stand as we sing.
Part of Series
Let's Go!
View all episodesTranscript
· I'm Brandon Hoffman, I'm Jenny Hoffman, and we've been coming to Cross Church for four
· and a half years.
· When we moved here four and a half years ago from the East Coast, nothing felt like
· home.
· Once we found Cross Church, our kids got involved with the youth ministry, they started
· getting involved in different programs and activities, helping out with Vacation Bible
· School, even the Esther Club program, our oldest daughter who's now 22 years old
· living in Virginia, started helping out, working with kids and loving on them, sharing
· with them, telling about Jesus, and our youngest daughter who's now a senior in high school
· has picked up that mantle and has continued on.
· Two words to describe how the church has made me feel is love and accepted.
· Being accepted into the children's ministry program and just loved on every week by
· the staff is super important just to make you feel welcomed and accepted.
· So thinking about being challenged, like Brandon said, you know, we're challenged as a couple,
· being leaders in the church, making sure that we're reading the scripture and really
· living it out every day and so that we can be good leaders and witnesses for God.
· And it's just, it's really neat to be able to settle in a church, feel like
· whether it's a Tuesday afternoon in your living room or a Sunday morning in service,
· the people you see, the people you interact with are your family.
· Maybe not blood, but they are laughing with you, they're praying with you,
· they're sharing stories, you're having lunch together, telling about events that
· happened this past week. It's just, it's truly a blessing to be able to have a
· church family our whole lives, then lose that and realize how much it meant to us,
· and then find a new church in Cross Church that has filled that void for us.
· All right, amen. Welcome. Welcome to Cross Church Phoenix. I am Pastor DJ. I'm the
· pastor here at Cross Church Phoenix, and I want to invite you to open your Bibles to
· Matthew chapter 28, and we'll be at verse 19. And if you're visiting with us this morning,
· welcome. We are in the middle of our sermon series through the Great Commission,
· and we have been, we are also launching a two-year discipleship program,
· discipleship journey, I should say, called Let's Go. And we're looking forward to seeing
· how God uses this to grow us and shape us into who He wants us to be.
· And so if you're wondering, what is Let's Go? What is this whole thing? There's,
· we have a lobby display in the back with more information. A few weeks ago, we shared a vision
· video from our lead pastor, Jackie, and that's available online for you as well. But
· Let's Go is our church's response to the Great Commission. Our series theme has been
· fulfilling the Great Commission one church at a time. And we believe that God is calling
· church to be a beacon of light. One time it has been shared that we are turning into the Motel 6
· in the church world and are striving to keep gospel lights on because the truth is we live
· in a time where churches are closing all across America. And that is fact. It's not just kind of
· it. It is a fact that churches are closing all over the place and we can't keep all of them open,
· but we strive to keep as many as we can. Some of them are being sold and turned into bars
· or apartment complexes, stuff like that. Gospel lights are going out. And at Cross Church,
· as you see plastered all over our church, we're about making Jesus known. And God has
· positioned us to be a church ready and passionate about keeping other church doors open.
· And our prayer is that you'll join us in this endeavor by engaging with our Let's Go mission.
· So you may have seen these floating around, these commitment cards. I would highly encourage
· you to snag one and pray over it. Our main goal is 100% engagement by all who call Cross
· Church their home. The amount, I don't want anything to do with. I don't want to know that,
· but we do believe and I preach and teach that giving is an act of worship and obedience.
· That's not my opinion. That's God's word. So I will stand on that. But I want to invite you
· to snag one of these on your way out and pray over it. In two weeks, we will have
· a commitment Sunday where we come, lay our commitment cards at the altar and dedicate them
· to the Lord. So that will be Sunday, March 29th during our morning services. But I ask
· that you would pray. Pray about your involvement with the Let's Go discipleship journey.
· Also, we are accepting and we need Easter candy donations. So if you look in the far back,
· there's a yellow sign with a bucket. Easter candy donations we are taking. And also,
· you may have seen these in each chair. These are our Easter invitations. So I
· am challenging you to snag yours in your chair. And then there's more in the baskets on your
· way out. Grab a few and pass them out, hand them out, invite people to church for Good Friday
· and Easter Sunday. And with all that being said, let's go to the Lord in prayer before we begin.
· Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your love and grace and mercy.
· Pray now that you would help us, Lord, with all the things going on
· in and through Cross Church and with the season coming of Holy Week and
· as we reflect upon the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ that
· you would help us, God, to just take a minute to slow down in this moment,
· this Sunday morning as we come under the word of God. Pray that you would give us eyes to see,
· ears to hear what the Spirit has to say to the church here at Cross Church of Phoenix.
· In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I will ask you if you are able to stand with us as we read
· God's word together. And if you're unable to, that's fine. You can stand with us in spirit.
· That is perfectly fine. But I'm going to read Matthew 28, 19, and 20, and then
· a couple verses from Acts chapter 1. Matthew chapter 28, verse 19, Jesus says,
· 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 everything I have commanded you
· and remember I am with you always to the end of the age.
· And Acts chapter 1, verses 6 through 8 says, So when they had come together, they asked him,
· Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them,
· It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority,
· 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.
· Thank you. You can be seated.
· Last week, if you were here, if not, it's online, but we focused in on the authority
· of Jesus Christ because that lays the foundation for the Great Commission. Jesus
· lays that foundation himself. Before he gives them commands, he reassures them and tells them
· who he is, which is Lord, right? The Savior, the risen Jesus Christ,
· and he has all authority in heaven and on earth. And so when Jesus says, Go, therefore,
· you may have heard this. It's a common little cliche in Bible interpretation, but
· if you see the word, therefore, you can ask yourself what? What's it? Therefore, right?
· And therefore, Bible writers will use that term to refer back to what they previously said as
· they make a current point. So Paul will do it sometimes in Ephesians chapter four, right? After
· everything I said in one through three, which is all doctrinal, he says, Therefore, I urge
· you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, right? Because of all
· of this, do this. And Jesus is doing the same thing. Therefore, right? Because I have all
· authority in heaven and on earth, this is what you should go to. Remembering that it's all
· about my authority, not your own. So having established last Sunday that Christ has all
· authority, and we walk through the Gospel of Matthew pointing that out, the question now
· this Sunday as we set this up is simply this. So are we submitted to his authority?
· As we come to the meat of the Great Commission, it's easy to read it, agree with it, love it,
· say amen to it, and yet never actually do it, right? So to help us see the Great Commission
· for what it is, I want us to work through a few myths and facts about the Great Commission. So
· if you have a handout among all the other things that are back there, there's also
· handouts, sermon handouts on the tables in the back. You can grab one. If not,
· you can just simply follow along. But that is the heading we're working with
· this morning, myths and facts about the Great Commission. So our first myth is this,
· it's the great suggestion. It's the great suggestion. And sometimes the Great Commission
· is treated like it's the great suggestion. When the truth of the matter is fact, number one,
· it's the great command. The great command. There are two commands in the entire Great
· Commission. Neither of them are the word go, which might be surprising, right? Like wait a
· minute, go, it wouldn't that be, it is part of it, yes. But the first command or in the
· original languages, right, Greek, it would be the imperative. I like to call it the knife hand.
· You know, if you know, if you know the knife hand, like this is the command, right?
· The first command in the Great Commission is make disciples. It's two words in English,
· but one in Greek. Make disciples is the command. We are commanded to do that.
· The second command, if you're curious about it, is in verse 20.
· And it's the word remember. Or some translations will say behold or lo, I am with you. The
· in the CSB, remember, that is actually in the imperative. All that means is it's a command.
· So if you put it together, we are commanded to remember that Christ is with us as we obey also
· the command to make disciples. It's great. Jesus says don't forget. Keep it in mind.
· Remember I am with you. Be active in your remembrance of that, right,
· as you are active in making disciples. But the bottom line is this. We must be about the
· business of making disciples. Notice that the Great Commission does not say go and make
· converts, which we want, right? We do want people to come to Christ. I'm not minimizing
· that. But if somebody gets saved and we say congratulations, you've arrived. There's nothing
· left for you to do. Just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you'll die and go to heaven.
· We're not fulfilling the Great Commission then.
· It doesn't say go invite people to church so that the pastor can make them a disciple.
· It doesn't say be an apologist. Go and be an apologist having all the answers to every
· question anyone could ever possibly come up with. It also doesn't say go and start another
· podcast, right? Go and do this. Go and do it. And yet it's those things that often
· dominate Christianity. Even among mature Christians, mature Christians will fight
· secondary issues while ignoring primary issues.
· And the primary command here is to make disciples. And so you say, well, how do we do that?
· At its most basic element, we do this by spreading the message of the gospel wherever
· we go. We often think that the command is the word go. And that is not true. The commands
· are make disciples. And remember, go is a participle in Greek. And I know that this is
· not English class, but a participle is like adding ing, right? So to run is a verb.
· Running would be a participle, like the running man. It's describing what he's doing.
· And so, of course, the word go, the implication is that the disciples need to go places in
· order to fulfill the command to make disciples. They don't need to sit around and wait for
· magically appear in front of them. That's true. But the word go is actually going.
· It's more of a, if you could think about it, as you're going, make disciples. Or wherever
· you're going, make disciples. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
· Therefore, going, make disciples, baptizing, and teaching. The reason it gets translated
· is go helps us understand it. If he said, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on
· earth. Going, therefore, it's a little bit different. It's go, therefore, to help us
· understand it. Yes, but it would literally be going, therefore. And if you look at the words
· baptizing and teaching, it's the same thing. Those are participles. So there are three.
· It's going, baptizing, and teaching describe how we obey the command to make disciples.
· So when we've gone to someone, witnessed to them, and they respond to the gospel,
· what do we do? Well, we baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
· and proceed to teach them to observe the commands of Christ. That's making a disciple.
· But it all starts with permeating our city with the message of the gospel. And those that we go to,
· those that we witness to, may not end up attending our church. Maybe you share the gospel
· with someone, they get saved, and they plug in somewhere else. That's fine. But our sister,
· if you remember, our sister Tanya, who was here at 9 a.m., she got saved at Charlie
· Kirk's Memorial. Had nothing to do with Cross Church Phoenix. She just got saved at
· Charlie Kirk's Memorial, found our church, and has been here ever since. And what was
· our response to that? What did we do? Well, we baptized her and proceed to now teach her
· everything Christ commands. And the same is true for all of us. Every single one of us,
· if you call yourself a Bible-believing Christian, you need to be baptized. It's a command
· from Christ and then be taught everything else, right? Be taught what he is commanded.
· That is for all of us. And I want to point that out because oftentimes we might think
· that we have to get people to come to church before we can share the gospel with them.
· And that's not true. Evangelism is much more than a church invitation, though church
· invitation is good, right? We want an invite culture here. That's why we have handouts,
· invitations for Good Friday, and invitations for Easter, and opportunities to come give those
· out. We are and want an invite culture, but obeying the Great Commission at its most basic
· level is sharing the gospel message with other people. And you can make Jesus known to them
· before they step foot in any church. That's the point. Church attendance is a byproduct of
· getting saved, yes, but it is not a prerequisite to getting saved. But sometimes we treat it like
· that, and it's not. I did some research on how many Christians share the gospel,
· and so the following is your Google AI overview, right? So you can decide how
· worthy that is or isn't, but they base it off of their findings and research.
· But here you go. I'm quoting them. It says this quote, while many Christians believe
· in the importance of evangelism, a low percentage actively share their faith.
· Studies show that only five to 25 percent of Christians actively share the gospel,
· while some data suggest that 91 to 95 percent have never shared their faith verbally.
· And then, as these Google returns always do, it gives you additional findings,
· common barriers for it. So common barriers include fear of rejection, lack of training,
· and a belief that evangelism is not their personal responsibility. Those are your top three
· barriers to evangelism. And then they give you key findings. It is pretty amazing what
· they can do, but key findings on Christian evangelism in a bold heading, right? General
· reluctance. Approximately 47 percent of Christians are reluctant to share their faith.
· Shifting responsibility. The belief that evangelism is a personal responsibility
· dropped from 89 percent in 1993 to 64 percent in 2018.
· With more Christians believing, it's primarily the church's job to do it.
· That means that over the last approximately 30 years, 25 percent more Christians don't
· believe personal evangelism is necessary and that the church is solely responsible to do it all.
· And then their last little heading here, frequency of sharing. In a six-month period,
· less than half, 46 percent of self-identified Christians shared a Bible verse or story,
· 43 percent invited someone to church, and only 38 percent explained how to become a Christian.
· So what that means is about one-third of Christians can explain to someone else how
· to become a Christian. One of the sources for this was an article by Barna Group in 2018.
· They wrote an article called this, quote, sharing faith is increasingly optional for
· Christians, end quote. Interesting, right? Sharing our faith is becoming increasingly
· optional. More and more optional as the years go by. And to that I say,
· may that not be true of this church. But we must ask ourselves, how are we doing?
· In the last six months, or maybe six years, would you, would I, would we say that we're not just
· acknowledging Christ's authority, right? Saying yes and amen to verse 17.
· I'm sorry, I'm saying yes and amen to verse 18, but ignoring verse 19 and 20.
· Are we acknowledging Christ's authority, or are we also truly coming under it by obeying
· the Great Commission? How many times have we intentionally given the gospel message to someone
· in the last six years, let's say, or six months, whatever time frame you want to use
· to evaluate and reflect? Here at Cross Church Phoenix now, one of my missions is to destroy
· the top three reasons we don't share the gospel. If you remember what they were,
· it was fear of rejection, lack of training, and a belief that evangelism is not their
· personal responsibility. Well, what we learned last week, right, we have nothing to fear
· because Christ has all authority in heaven on earth. We offer evangelism training now,
· which helps us address the lack of training that did exist. And after this sermon, we all know,
· hey, it's our personal Christian responsibility as a disciple of Christ.
· And I know that we will still struggle with some of these things, fear of rejection
· especially, but also lack of training and this belief that it's not our personal responsibility,
· but we have to work against that. And this leads to our second myth, myth number two,
· it's a Great Commission reserved for church leaders. It is a Great Commission for the
· pastors and the elders, right? As your pastor, I am called to feed the sheep. I am called to
· feed and minister to the church. My job is to shepherd and guide and teach and preach to feed
· you and not let you starve of biblical truth. This statement has been made by many a pastor,
· so this is not original to me, but I subscribe to it. I refuse to starve sheep to entertain goats,
· okay? However, I do preach to unbelievers. I do pray that they will get saved. That's
· not the point. But the point is I am failing my job if I am not equipping you to go out
· and do ministry. My biblical primary job is to equip the saints of the church for the work
· of the ministry. That is my primary job. If you look at it in Ephesians, I believe it's chapter
· six. It's four, five or six in the practical portion of Ephesians, right?
· He says what he gives pastors and teachers and evangelists to do what? To equip the
· saints for the work of the ministry. So this leads me to fact number two. It's a great
· commission for all disciples of Christ. All disciples of Christ. And just because I'm
· the pastor doesn't mean I'm exempt from personal evangelism, which does convict my own heart.
· I am a disciple of Christ in need of the body of Christ in the ministry of this church just
· as much as anyone else. I'll share this personal story of what happened this past week. I had
· some Jehovah's Witnesses come over to my house and didn't knock on my door. I had my garage
· open. So I was in the garage and I saw them arrive and I believe I recognized one. They
· came in a group of four kind of splitting up two by two and knocking on doors. So I knew that
· they would come. And I've talked to, I believe one of them before, but I have talked to them
· before others. And they're so steeped into it that oftentimes talking to them only makes it
· worse. They're so ingrained. So I told myself, I know they're coming. They're going to
· invite me to the Kingdom Hall over here for Easter stuff. And so they show up,
· smiles on their faces, hand me the thing and walk away. And I didn't say anything.
· And I watched them walk to neighboring houses and God was like,
· why don't you say anything? So I took note. They park, you know, what they'll do is they'll
· walk about halfway down the block, do the block and then leave. And so they were parked
· not right in front of my house, but across from my house. So I could see it. And I was like,
· well, when they come back to their car, I'll initiate a conversation with them. And so they
· came back and I did. And I got to talking to this lady and this one lady began the
· conversation with me. I said, Hey, let me just ask you one question. Do you believe the
· Bible? She said, yes, we do. I said, okay, if I could prove to you that Jesus is God
· from the Bible alone, using Bible verses alone, not my commentary on it, just the
· scriptures and letting them speak for themselves, would you believe that? She said, no.
· So I'm like, you don't believe the Bible then. Well, yes, I do. Right. Well, no, you don't.
· But she was curious. And so she said, I would not believe it, even if you could prove it
· from the Bible, but I'm curious. Like, how would you? Right. So I took her to some passages
· that are clear, right? Basically, Jehovah's Witnesses make God a liar. Okay. In the
· besides me, there is no savior. And what happens when Jesus is born in Luke chapter two,
· the angel Gabriel says, friend to you, is born in the city of David. What? The Savior,
· who is Christ the Lord. They have to break the scriptures to make it make sense, right?
· They make Yahweh a liar. They make Luke a liar. They make the angel Gabriel a liar.
· Everyone's a liar to make their theology work, right? Matthew's a liar because he's
· a manual God with us. Well, no, he's not, right? And they've never been able to give
· an answer to these. This is Isaiah, Hosea mixed together. And then if you bring it together with
· Luke, they have to say, well, Yahweh said he was the only savior, but then he made
· another one. So he's like, my bad guys, I was the only savior. I made another one now for
· Isaiah. His name is Jesus. And it's just false teaching. Well, a gentleman gets out of the car
· who's the angrier one, could tell that I was opposing this lady in her theology.
· And he gets out and he comes up to me and he says, you know, Isaiah nine verse six,
· I said, yes, I do. Isn't that great? Our Christmas verse, right? Unto us a child is
· given. His name shall be called the wonderful counselor of the mighty God. And he stops right
· there. He's like, yeah, mighty God. He said, Jesus is mighty God. Yahweh, Jehovah is all mighty
· God. I was like, you're going to stake your eternity on that. And I said, could you finish
· that verse for me please, sir? And he wouldn't, right? Well, no, I just want you to know
· Jesus is mighty God, not the almighty God, which is bad hermeneutics and bad theology. We can
· talk about that later, right? But I said, could you please finish that verse? And then
· I just did it for him. He will be called the wonderful counselor of the mighty God
· and everlasting father and Prince of peace, by the way. How do you make that work?
· You just admitted this is a verse pertaining to Christ, and yet you refuse to acknowledge
· that he's one with the everlasting father. That's what he refuses to acknowledge,
· and he has to break the scriptures in order to do it. Well, he huffed and puffed,
· and I thought he might blow my house down, but he didn't. But he got home. He went back
· into his car and left. But he said one thing to me before he walked away. He said,
· look, DJ, right? Look, we're the only ones fulfilling the great commission. Until you
· knock on my door, don't tell me about making disciples of Christ.
· And I said, you know, unfortunately, there's some truth to your statement.
· And I told them that I was pastoring a church and that we're trying to flip that,
· right? And be more active in the neighborhood, train our people to do evangelism,
· be about spreading the gospel. But we should be out there, because cults are.
· They're less ashamed of their bad theology than we are of our good theology.
· We can't let them have a monopoly on street neighborhood evangelism. We can't.
· But they're out there more than we are.
· And so all that's to say, the pastor must be about sharing the gospel truth as well.
· Let's move to our third myth, myth number three. I must know everything about the Bible
· before I can obey it. This is part of that fear of rejection, right? A lot of Christians
· are scared of what they'll be asked. A lot of us are worried that if we can't
· answer every single possible question thrown at us, then we won't be a witness. But
· that's not true, nor should it be our approach, which leads to our third fact.
· Fact number three, you are to be a witness, not a seminary professor.
· Nothing wrong with seminary professors. I just, you know, I can pick on them.
· I went to seminary, so hey, here you go, right? And I learned a lot there.
· But you don't need to know Greek and Hebrew to share the gospel.
· It can come in handy. The gentleman who is mad at me as a Jehovah's Witness said,
· DJ, fine. Where's the verse that teaches? What's the first verse that teaches
· the Trinity? And I said, I'm glad you asked. It's the very first verse of the Bible,
· Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, God, he's like, it just says God. It's Yahweh.
· I said, it is Yahweh. Isn't that great? But it's Elohim. I'm like, do you know Hebrew,
· brother? He's like, no. I was like, so do you know what Elohim means? He's like, no.
· I was like, okay, why are you outpedaling this then, if you don't have a clue what it says?
· Elohim is the plural form of the word El, like El, a singular God. Like El Shaddai would be God
· Almighty. So it would be like describing attribute of God, right? El Shaddai. Elohim
· is the thrice plural form of that singular noun. So it is a conundrum. But you have El,
· Eloah is the dual, right? And Elohim is the thrice plural. But it is a noun, singular noun.
· So it does kind of kind of blow your mind, right? But that's the point. In the beginning,
· God, Elohim created heavens and the earth. And he said, what? Let us make man in our image.
· Who else is there? I don't know. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's who's around.
· In the beginning, but it's Elohim. But Greek and Hebrew help. But you don't need to know that
· to share the gospel, right? What matters is can you share basic elements of the gospel,
· explaining sin, what it is, disobedience to God, anything that is not up to his standards,
· and show people that their sin separates them from our holy and just God who must punish sin.
· That's what hell is, right? And then share the good news that Christ came. He is a manual God
· with us and he lived a perfect life. He's fully God and he's fully man. He committed no sin
· and yet he went to the cross and he died on the cross for his own sin. No, he had none
· for our sin. He bore our sins, as Peter says, on the tree. And he died and he didn't stay
· dead. He rose on the third day just as he said he would, and he offers eternal life to all who
· will receive him, to all who will repent, to turn from their sin, and put their faith and
· trust in Christ to forgive their sin, be reconciled to God through Christ, the only
· one who can save them. Can you share the basic elements of the gospel? It's a challenge,
· right? I have talked to a few people who are like, I know what I believe. It's not just in my head,
· it's in my heart. I know what I believe. It's so hard to articulate. That's all right. We can help
· you. We can help you. Can you share a three-minute testimony of your own salvation,
· what God has done in your own life? It's a good challenge, right? Two, three minutes.
· You don't have to get up and preach at someone for an hour telling your whole life
· story, but can you put together a couple minute testimony is another good challenge. And these
· don't require seminary degrees. What does it require? Faithfulness to the obedience
· of the gospel requires faithfulness to be a witness. That's what Acts 1 describes us as,
· witnesses. A witness in a courtroom is what? A witness. He's not the prosecutor
· and he's not the defense attorney. You're a witness. What does a witness do? Well, in a courtroom,
· what's a witness going to do? Give testimony, right? Bear witness to what they've seen,
· heard, and experienced. That's what we're called to be. God's not telling you to be
· his prosecutor. He will judge, right? The living and the dead, 2 Timothy 4.1.
· You're not called to be his defense attorney. He was perfectly fine without you. He'll be
· perfectly fine after you, right? He needs you. He's called you to be his witness.
· Acts 1a doesn't say go and be, but you will be my seminary professors to the ends of the
· earth. No, you will be my witnesses through the power of the Holy Spirit. We will be
· his witnesses. And I want to save this for the end here because we're providing
· two opportunities for you to do this coming up. Mark your calendars if you have note or piece of
· paper. On March 28th and April 4th, both of them are Saturdays. March 28th and April 4th.
· Saturdays at 6 30 p.m. We're going to be going out to pass out flyers
· for Good Friday and Easter as well as doing any evangelism that we can.
· And we will be meeting here at the church to start right with prayer
· before we go out and then we'll meet back here.
· It's just an open invitation to come do what God has, what Jesus has commanded us to do.
· And if you can't make it, it's not the only opportunity, right? I'm sharing this to say
· you're invited to and we would encourage you to come, right? But the point is whether or not
· you come on the 28th of the 4th, the point is will we obey the great commission and make disciples
· wherever we're going, as we're going in our daily life? The command isn't the word go.
· Like some people are like, well I can't go to Africa. Some people are called to go to
· Africa as missionaries. You may not be. It's as you're going. Where does God have you?
· I got bills to pay and I work at this place. Okay, be his witness however you can. I know it gets a
· little dicey in work situations, so that's fair. But I'm just saying as you're going in the
· neighborhood he has you in, be a witness. In the workplace he has you in, to the extent that
· you can, be a witness. In the family he has you in, be a disciple maker. Be about the gospel.
· It's not the great commission isn't commanding you to go to the unreached people group in
· Africa. God will call his people to do that, but you are called to make disciples where you are,
· wherever you are going.
· I want to invite the worship team up as I close with a simple benediction.
· I've enjoyed finding these and blessing our church with them.
· This one is 1st Timothy 6, 13 to 16. And Paul says to young Timothy there at the end of the letter,
· he says, I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus
· who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession to keep the commandment
· unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,
· which he will display at the proper time. He who is blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings
· and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one
· has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. Let's stand as we sing.
Let's Go!