THE WAY FORWARD
Matthew 28: 21-28
August 31, 2008
Joe Kutter, preaching

The question is, why do we do what we do? Why have we done what we have done?  Why build a gym and stage? Why Upward Basketball?  Why a brand new look to children’s Sunday School, Faith Forrest? Why start the ConneXion Service?  Why totally redesign our ministries with children and youth?  Why try an after-school program for middle school students? Why have we done the things that we have done? Why risk upsetting people with new things when the old things worked so well in the past?

The answer that has guided us for the past eleven years and the answer that will guide this congregation in the decades to come is an answer that is two-fold. First, when the things that used to work don’t work as well, we need to try something else.  Why is that, you may ask. We try something new because we are under the never-ending orders of the “The Great Commission.” 

A few years ago, our Board of Ministries met to clarify a vision for the future that would guide them as they lead this congregation. After hours of conversation, we arrived at the obvious. We returned to the ancient last commandment of Jesus found in the very last verses of the Gospel of Matthew.  It is the foundation upon which we have been standing and it is the vision of the future which will guide this congregation into the future.

Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me.” In matters of faith and practice, Jesus is the authority. Jesus is the one who knows. If you want to know about God, look to Jesus. If you want to know what a human being is supposed to be and how a person is supposed to live, look to Jesus.  If you want to read your Bible, read it through the instruction of Jesus. Jesus is the last word. Jesus is the word of God. Jesus is the authority.

“Therefore”, he says, “Go”: There is an assertive quality here. Just as he sent the apostles and the disciples into the world with the good news of God’s nearby kingdom, just as he sent them to do the good work of the kingdom, so he is sending First Baptist into this community with the good news and the good works of Jesus Christ. Upward Basketball, the ConneXion Service, The Shepherd Center are all efforts to reach out into the community. We’ve reached out and they have come to us. Then we discovered the very next question, “Now what?”

He said, “Go and make disciples.” Disciples: What in the world is a disciple? A disciple is one who accepts the discipline of the teacher as his own. Do you see how the words disciple and discipline have the same root. The disciple is the one who lives the way that Jesus teaches us to live.

Allow me an observation. In my years of ministry, I’ve met too many believers who are not disciples. They claim to believe everything about Jesus. They just don’t want to live as he taught us to live. They want the belief without the discipline and they miss the point. Jesus said, “Make disciples” and the first disciple to make is you.

He said, “Make disciples of all nations.”  Nations: The word is “ethnos” and from that word we get the word ethnic. It is about the peoples of this world. It is about nations to be sure but it is also about clans and tribes and families and races and classes. The key word is all, all peoples, all nations, all! Nobody is to be left out. Not for reason of economics or politics or tradition or history size or look or age or for any other reason nobody is to be left out of the mission to make disciples of all nations.

He said to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptize: We Baptists think that we have the baptism thing down pat. We believe that we’ve got the thing about the water right and … we do. But let me remind you of the meaning of the baptism.

The word "baptize" actually means to dip or to immerse or to dunk. So when we baptize a person, we immerse him or her in the water. All the way in, all the way under, all the way wet.

Now listen again to Jesus. He said to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. What is this business of the name? The name represents the reality. To speak the name of God is to represent his reality in all of its dimensions.

In our family, when we speak the name, Christy, we mean an old dachshund who has been with us for a dozen years. The name speaks of her childhood and all of that energy. It speaks of her peculiarities. It speaks of the years that she has been with us. And now it speaks of her cataracts and the fact that she is getting gray-white and she spends most of her time sleeping. The name brings the whole reality of her life to mind.

So to baptize a person in the name of God is to immerse that person in the reality of God. We baptize in the name of The Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Father: the creator of all that is, the one who holds it all together, the one who loves us like a father with an invitation to live up to the highest standards in the universe and the promise of infinite forgiveness and mercy.

The Son: Jesus who is the savior of the world. The one who lived and taught and performed miracles and who died and was resurrected so that “whosoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life, and so that the world through him might be saved. (Read John 3: 16-17)

The Holy Spirit: The One who is our Paraclete, our comforter and counselor and guide is the One who binds us together as a church. The Holy Spirit is the intimate one who knows us better than we know ourselves.

We are to immerse all the peoples of this world into the full reality of God. That is our call.

And we are to teach. How shall they learn without teachers? How shall they learn the full reality of God without teachers?

Teach what? To observe all that Jesus commanded.  Let’s start with the two great commandments. You shall love God with all of your being and you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. To observe what Jesus taught is to learn the practice of love. It is to learn to care for one another as he cared for us and it is to learn how to love God. Everything grows out of those two commandments. The Apostle Paul said it this way,

“Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” [Romans 13:10, NRSV]

He said to teach them to observe all that I have commanded, and loving God and neighbor are at the center of his commandments, and then he made this great big wonderful promise. “I will be with you until the end of the age.” Jesus’ great promise is that he will always be with us.

This scripture has been the foundation stone for our ministry here. It is the reason that we have done the things we have done. And this too has been true. We have made a mistake or two, and we have hit some rough spots in the road, but I am convinced that Jesus has never abandoned us and that, indeed, he has always been with us. 

That which has been true in years and centuries past will remain true in the days to come. Our mandate has not changed. The Great Commission has not been amended or altered. It is our mandate for the days to come. While strategies may change, the commandment is eternal.

May God bless you in every way.

Amen.