Matt Chandler - Hospitality and the Greatest Story Ever Told

Well, good morning! If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 28. If you have a background in church, you’ll actually know this text; it’s a wildly popular and well-known passage. Heck, you might not even have a background in church and still know this text. So, we’ll start here, and then I want to go to a couple of places. I think what I’m teaching on this morning won’t be unique to us if we’ve been around for a while, but I do believe it’s one of those things we need to be refreshed in. That’s my goal in our time together today.

I want to finish up this small series we’re doing on Christian courage. In Week 1, we talked about what the basis of our courage is; it’s not that we have cultural and political favor or that the majority culture backs what we believe. Instead, our courage is rooted in who God is, what God has done, and how God has designed things to be. Thus, we need not the applause of men to be courageous in what God has called us to do. Last week, we began to look at and discuss, really, we focused on one verse: Exodus 15, verse 3. In one sentence, «The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is His name.» We explored cosmic realities, noting that you and I, as mankind, are not brains on a stick; there is something behind all that we see and know that must be accounted for.

We examined how God makes war against Satan and demons and against those who have pledged their allegiance to those dark forces. We walked through that last week and discussed what we call, or what Tremper Longman calls, stage 4 warfare—where Christ’s life, death, and resurrection have triumphed over Satan and demonic forces. Now, the people of God, filled with the Holy Spirit and by the blood of Christ, make war against the darkness by doing good, showing compassion, sharing the gospel, and being salt and light to the world around them. God’s stage 4 warfare is not violent but rather loving, kind, long-suffering, and patient.

That’s what we covered last week, and this week, I wanted to end the series by getting a bit more practical. I want to pull it down to the ground and talk about what that looks like, perhaps in your life, in my life, and possibly, if we have time, in the life of the village church. What I want to do is look at the Great Commission—that’s what this text is called—and then talk about how you and I fit into the Great Commission. I’ll give you my outline here in a second for you typists, but first, let’s look at Matthew 28, starting in verse 18.

And Jesus came and said to them, «All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.» Every time I’ve read that verse, I like to stop right there and think, «Okay, it doesn’t matter what He says next.» At that point, it doesn’t matter what He says next; we can be pretty confident that we’re going to be alright in it because if all authority in heaven and on earth—if you think back to Week 1 when we talked about God’s cosmic reach—God is not inside of time but outside of it. The future is not merely a place He knows about, but a place He is. He is omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful. If we start thinking about that, and now Jesus just says, «All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, ” then it doesn’t matter what He says next.

So what does He say next? „Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.“ Now, let’s talk about this little phrase right here in the Greek. I don’t need to say the phrase in Greek; I just want to kind of explain it. There’s an argument about what’s happening in this phrase, and I think one of the things that’s going on is that they’re both arguing the same thing foolishly, right? They’re saying, „If you’re married, you know exactly what I’m talking about.“ They’re saying the same thing; we’re just kind of missing each other. That’s what’s happening in the argument because the argument is, „Okay, what this means is that you go, right? You get all your stuff in, head out, and go into all the nations.“ So, you pack up your things, leave your land, and go into a place where Christ is not known to preach and teach the gospel there.

Well, I think that’s exactly what He’s saying, and in fact, we have many families who have sold their practices, resigned from their positions, and moved their families to China, India, parts of Africa, and all over the world to do just this—to go and make disciples of all nations. But the other side of the argument is that what’s happening in the phrasing of this is more about as you go, right? So it’s not that you would actually pack up and move like a missionary.