This week, we grapple with the weight of Jesus' words about His authority and our mission to make disciples. It's a conversation that transcends the walls of our church and spills into the grocery store aisles and coffee shop corners where we live our daily lives. We discuss how the simplest exchanges can carry the profound love of Christ and the Holy Spirit's guiding hand in every interaction. Join us as we explore the ripple effect of living out the Great Commission in the most ordinary yet impactful ways.
Thanks for listening! Find us on Instagram or visit our Website.
This week, we grapple with the weight of Jesus' words about His authority and our mission to make disciples. It's a conversation that transcends the walls of our church and spills into the grocery store aisles and coffee shop corners where we live our daily lives. We discuss how the simplest exchanges can carry the profound love of Christ and the Holy Spirit's guiding hand in every interaction. Join us as we explore the ripple effect of living out the Great Commission in the most ordinary yet impactful ways.
Thanks for listening! Find us on Instagram or visit our Website.
On Friday I got a call from Pastor Chip and he said Brooklyn has got the stomach virus and crew. We had to take crews to the hospital. He has the crew and he said so I don't know what's gonna be happening. But he said if you could kind of have something ready in case I can't preach, I'd appreciate it. And I said okay, we can, we can do that and so went through the day the rest of the day. Friday. I had a funeral yesterday and got home as I was leaving to go home I got a text from him. He had thumbs up. He said we're all good, everybody is well. He said it looks like we're gonna be great.
Speaker 1:This morning about five o'clock I get a text message and he said we're in trouble. He said I'm not feeling well and he said if we could take care of everything today he would appreciate it very much. So I want to thank our deacons. I want to thank all of our our folks that have helped us with baptism. We were blessed to have two candidates that were baptized this morning. We'll have two here in just a little while and the Lord's doing some great things. But everybody's picked up the pieces and we just moved right along.
Speaker 1:You know, it's really neat how God does things, and even when we think there may be chaos or confusion, he has a way to help us to recognize that he is right in the midst of the turmoil of our lives. And as the praise team band was leading us, I was listening to the words of the songs, and some of those words are in the message that God laid on my heart to share with y'all today. One of those words is authority, and we'll be talking about that in just a moment. But what I want us to look at today is from Matthew 28, matthew chapter 28, beginning with verse 16, and this is what it says. Then the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go 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 obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. I've been reading this passage of scripture over the last few days and even before, pastor Chip called and asked me if I might be able to preach for him today, and it's. It's just been amazing how God has been working in my life, helping me to understand who I am and how God wants to use me, and as we were preparing for baptism this week, it just kind of reiterated again what Jesus was saying to us and what is called the Great Commission, and this is something. This is not a suggestion that Jesus made. This is a commissioning for all of us who were believers in Christ Jesus, and he, he, wants us to understand the things that he wants us to be about, and so that's what we're going to look at for just a little while today, as we kind of unwrap a little bit of what the Great Commission is speaking about.
Speaker 1:The first thing that that I want to to mention to you and point out to you is that these were Christ's disciples that had gone to meet him. If you look in some of the verses ahead of this and in chapter 28, there's one in particular where, where the went, the ladies came and found Jesus after the resurrection and he greeted them and then he told them. He said don't be afraid, go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me. And so this is. Jesus had given them directions through those women that he talked to. So they went to the disciples, so they were following the, the order and the direction of Christ as they went to meet him in Galilee.
Speaker 1:But this is something that that, when I look at it, it it frustrates me a little bit, but it also gives me a lot of hope. And it said they worshiped him, but some doubted. They worship Him, but some doubt Him. In every worship service we have, there are some of us who are worshiping, but there are some who are doubting because of the circumstances of life that they may be in and they may not quite be sure of what a relationship with Jesus looks like or how their relationship with Christ has grown or how maybe they've become stagnant in their faith. But these are the guys that had spent three years with Jesus and yet, when they come to this point and they meet Him here in a hill in Galilee, there were some of them that embraced Him immediately, but there were others that backed away.
Speaker 1:You go. Why would they do that? Well, one of the things that I think we can see is that when we encounter Christ, a lot of it has what we understand about Him has to do with our condition. You see, the perspective of those disciples was they thought they had been defeated, even though they had heard Jesus talk about that he would be in the grave for three days and he would rise over the grave. They did not process that right. They were looking at it from a totally different perspective than what Jesus was speaking about. And so when these disciples were questioning this, they didn't expect to see Jesus again. They were coming from an attitude of man he's gone.
Speaker 1:And you know that, if you remember, they hid after they crucified Him and they put Him in the tomb. They hid, they weren't sure what was going to happen, but they didn't expect to see Him again and this report that the women had seen Jesus was rocking their world. And then can you imagine what it was like to actually go and then to be standing in the presence of the Lord? And I believe what they were thinking was it was too good to be true. They've been through all this experience of Jesus being arrested and Jesus being hung on the cross, and then they saw Him as they took Him down and he was dead and they put Him in the tomb, and then now, here he is alive again, victorious over death and hell and the grave, and it's almost like they're saying this is too much. I don't know how I can deal with all of this.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I think that we can see in this is when we are on our spiritual journeys, that physical sight alone does not compel faith. Have you ever heard somebody say well, if I can see it, I'll believe it? That you know what, in the world we live in today, with all of the things that we can do, with computer generated pictures and videos and everything else, we can take a person out of a video and put somebody that was not even there in that video, and so if we see that and we believe it, it may not be true. And so I think, from a spiritual standpoint, even in the world that we live in today, we can recognize it. Just because you see something doesn't mean that you can believe it.
Speaker 1:The next thing that I think is that we look at is that the New Testament teaches if one will believe, then he will see. If one will believe, then he will see In just a moment. We're gonna baptize in this water here, and what we're gonna ask a question we're gonna say do you believe that Jesus died on the cross, was buried and raised from the dead? Do you believe that Jesus is Lord? And the response to that is yes. And so if we believe those words, if we pray those words and we ask Jesus to forgive us of our sins, then because of our faith and because of our belief, we then see Jesus just as he truly is and we can worship him in his truth and in his power. And so, you know, jesus even spoke to this over in John 20, 29. He said you know, blessed are those that see me and have known me, but far greater are those who have never seen but still believe. And we are in that group. We have never seen Jesus face to face. We've never seen Jesus physically, but we have experienced him physically I mean spiritually through the power of his Holy Spirit and through the power of his word, as he has changed our lives and transformed our lives, and that's what he wants to do for every person that has ever lived. And the reason that we know that is we can follow up these words with what he said in the next verse All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, did he say it was given to them.
Speaker 1:He didn't say it was given to any of the other religious leaders of the day. He said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Now, where did that authority come from? How did he get that authority? Well, first of all, it started from the very beginning, when he spoke into being all that has been created. The next, the second way that he gains that authority is that he lived and died on a cross and took our sin debt. And through the shedding of his blood he washed our sins clean and he paid our sin debt for us, so that then we could restore and renew our relationship with him. And not only did he just die on the cross, but he was buried and he was raised from the dead. So he has victory over death, he has victory over the grave and he is now sitting at the right hand of God in heaven for eternity. He has authority over the cosmos, he has authority over everything that has ever been, and that is where his authority comes from. And he says so this authority has been given to me.
Speaker 1:And then he says, therefore, as a little boy and I've heard other pastors through the years that say when you read in scripture and you see, therefore, then you need to look and see what it's there for. So Jesus said, therefore, so what did he say? So what are we looking for? He said go and make disciples of all nations. All right, so number one, what he wants us to do is go and make disciples. Now he made an assumption here If we have relationship with him, then we're not just gonna be keeping it in a little box for ourselves. If we have relationship with Jesus Christ, as we're going about our daily lives and our daily activities, jesus is expecting us to share with others what we know about him. And that doesn't sound very difficult, does it? But how many of us get afraid and think that we're not worthy or that we don't know enough scripture? Or I may say the wrong thing and I don't wanna hurt anybody's chances of getting to heaven, but Jesus is telling us that he is expecting us to go and tell about our relationship with him.
Speaker 1:As I thought about that today, I was reminded of the people in my life that God put in my life that helped me on my spiritual journey to come to faith in him. The first, obviously, for me, has been my parents, and they taught me what it was like to live in a godly home. They taught me to know that I was somebody important in God's kingdom and that Jesus gave his life for me. But not only did God allow me to have godly parents, but he also placed some godly lay people in my life, and one of those was a man by the name of CT Wisnet. He owned a dependable body shop in Brunswick, georgia, and CT Wisnet taught a class of nine year old boys and we were in the kitchen of the church and it was a galley kitchen.
Speaker 1:It had a window to serve out of on this side and then over here it had the stove and the sink and all of that stuff. Well, in between that there were three chairs in rows all the way through the kitchen and there were about 10 of us nine year old boys that sat in those hard folding chairs. We want the padded ones today. We don't wanna be uncomfortable and that's okay, but in that day we were sitting there on those chairs and Mr CT Wisnet stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Now why do you think that the teacher of a Sunday school class of nine year old boys would stand in the doorway of the kitchen? He wanted to keep us from escaping and of course all of us were little angels and we never did anything wrong, but Mr CT stood in the door to keep us locked in.
Speaker 1:But during that time, in the most unusual place that you might think of, god used Mr Wisnet, who is as everybody called him, used him to speak the truth of God into my life, in the lives of my friends, and I came to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And then I was baptized. A few days later I got saved when I was nine and I had a birthday before I got baptized the next month. So I was nine when I got saved and I was 10 when I was baptized and, thank God, it hadn't worn off yet.
Speaker 1:And so when we think about the people that God has put in our lives, have they been extraordinary people? Have they been people that were evangelists? You know that came up and that may have been your experience, and there's nothing wrong. That's great to have a revival and experience the power of God, but I believe that most people, there are common people, people that don't have any great experience or people that the world would never look at and say, wow, I want to be like them, but they speak truth in our lives and they help us to understand our need for Christ. And when we respond, they rejoice, and even in heaven they rejoice for what's taking place.
Speaker 1:So the question for us today is, if we are going to make disciples of all nations, how do we do that? We do it by living a life that is guided by the Holy Spirit. The Bible teaches us that God guides our step, that he guards us and he directs our paths and that we will follow Him. And so, when we follow Him and he's directing our paths, we need to have ears that are open and eyes that are open. We need to have hearts that are receptive to the opportunities that God gives to us. And what may that be?
Speaker 1:It might be recognizing that the young lady that's checking you out at the grocery store, that you can look at her countenance and you can tell that something is terribly wrong. And it may be that, by saying a kind word, that you would present the love of Christ to her. It might even be that, as you're sitting in a restaurant and you have a server that comes up, that before you have your blessing and thanking God for your meal, that you ask your server if you could pray for them and find out what's going on in their life. And you know, not too long ago the staff we went and ate at a restaurant, a local restaurant. We had a young lady that came and she was serving us and we asked her if we could pray with her about something, anything going on in her life, and she shared with us some of her need and we invited her to our church and she's been, she's brought her daughter with her and so we never know the impact that just a simple question of showing interest in someone's life and asking to pray for them, how God can use that. So God wants us to be about our normal business. He's not asking us to have red bibles and a white suit and a red tie running around through town. And again, for those who are called to do that, amen, more power to them. But it may be that, in the subtlety of your everyday walk, as a schoolteacher, as a salesperson, as a business owner, as an administrative assistant, as a boss over a group of people that the integrity that you use in your life and the way that you conduct yourself is an example of the love of Christ and the transforming power that he has, and when we do that we are making disciples of all nations. Karen has a cousin. His name is. We've called him Stevie all of his life, but Stevie grew up and he's Steve now.
Speaker 1:But Steve and his wife and family felt a call to international missions. They went to seminary. They prepared to go to India. They were learning the language and they sold everything they had. They went to India and they were there for a few months and then one of their daughters and Steve's wife got sick and they couldn't get well. So they went to Thailand for a little while for R&R and saw the doctors there and they got better. And so when they felt like they were well enough to go back, they went back again and the same thing happened. So it was determined that they were not gonna be able to stay in India and so they sent them to over back to Thailand and they were ministering there. But they did not have a heart for those people like they had for the people of India, so they decided they needed to come back home, so they had sold everything they owned before they left the States. Then they had to sell everything they had in India to come back.
Speaker 1:Well, they came back to the big city of Conway, arkansas, and Steve went to work for an international company that he had worked with before, and so during his initiation of getting back in the company, he started meeting people. He met a young man from India. That young man's parents lived in the city that Steve had been in when they were ministering in India, and he developed a relationship with this young man and they began to talk about the Lord and he came to their church in Conway and he finally he eventually became a believer in Christ and is now serving as an example of the power of God's divine mercy where he works. But Steve went to his boss and he said I'd like to do something. He said we got people from all over the world here. He said I wanna have a potluck dinner and I want them to bring the food from their countries and just have a get together once a month. But I only asked for one caveat Will you allow me to share the gospel when we meet together? His boss said yes, because of Steve's life, because of how he conducted himself, because of how well he did his job. His boss trusted him, so he allowed him to do that.
Speaker 1:Over a period of time, steve began to see God working. In his response, after a few months of building relationship with those people, he said we had to go to India to find out that God wanted us to be in Conway, arkansas, so that we could be international missionaries. We don't know what God's about, but if we saw the big picture we might want to say, no, I can't do that, I don't want to do that, I'm not capable. But because God broke it up in little bitty segments in Steve's life, he used them in a very powerful way. They became the preschool and children's minister of the church In Conway that they attended, and they've done that for several years. And here recently Arkansas Baptist convention recognized his gifts and their gifts, and so he has started working With evangelism in the Arkansas Baptist convention.
Speaker 1:So we never know what God's gonna do. We don't know what the end result is, but he does, and so we have to trust him with our future. So not only does he want us to make disciples of all nations, but he wants us to baptize them. And what do we baptize? We baptize because Jesus was baptized. Baptism is an act of obedience. What we're doing today is an act of obedience, and and as dawn and Olivia come today to be baptized, what they're gonna be saying is I'm being buried to an old way of life without Jesus and I'm being raised to walk in a new life in him, and they're saying and proclaiming that they are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is why we baptize.
Speaker 1:Pastor Mike baptized this morning at the 930 service, and one of the things that he said was they are Identifying themselves with Christ. I said something at the 930 service that they understood. You may not understand this, but when I was in high school, we had this thing that we called an ID bracelet, and Every you know a lot of people had an ID bracelet. I'm not a one. Ask you to raise your hand if you had an ID bracelet, because that way everybody around you know how old you are, and. But we had ID bracelets and and sometimes your girlfriend or boyfriend would give you an ID bracelet and it would have your name on one side and their name on the other. And I had an ID bracelet had a young lady's name on it, but it wasn't Karen Davis. I did not know her at that time and so we you know we got past that she. I think she made me throw it away once on time, I don't know, I don't remember.
Speaker 1:But but what Jesus wants us to do is to be identified with him. When you're identified with somebody, people know that you love them, right, they know that you care about them, they know that they love you. You know, in the sporting thing it, when most people see me, for better or worse I'm identified by a team. Anybody know what that team is. Well, that's right. And it's because I am a fan and I have loved watching them play and Throughout my life, and so I've made an identity with being a fan of the University of Georgia. And when, whatever team you make pull for, sometimes we make, we wear the clothes, we identify, we want people to know that, that we pull for them or whatever. In the same way, in our Christian walk we ought to be identified in such a way and people would know, by the way we live, that we belong to Jesus. So that's why we baptize is so our identification then becomes in Christ and and we're to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:There are many people who say, well, the Trinity is not in Scripture. I don't know how much better you can state the Trinity than being baptized. That Jesus said in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And Then Jesus says we're to do something else, that we are to teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. So we are to teach the things that Jesus has given to us. We are to teach the life lessons and the relationship that we have with Christ. We are to teach those with others that we're making disciples out of them as they grow in their walk with Christ. So what does that mean that we have to do? We can't just get Walk down the aisle of a church and and get in a baptismal pool and get dunked and say I'm going to heaven and I can go live the way I want to. I got it covered, I got me insurance For heaven.
Speaker 1:That's not what God wants from us. What he wants from us is for us to follow his authority and to recognize that he has a plan for each of us to follow and those things that he has taught us and Commanded for us to do. He expects us to do so. So what do we know? We know that he loves us. He gave himself for us. What did he tell us? How did how will people know who we are? How will they know that we're a Christian? How will they know that we're a believer in Jesus Christ? Jesus said they will know it by our love, our Love for him and our love for each other. And as we show love and kindness to other people, as we Speak, a word of kindness to them is, as we speak, truth and love to them. Then they can come to know Christ, even as we know him. And Then, the caveat of all of it, the, the cherry on top of the ice cream, and Surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age. So what is he saying there? He's giving us this commissioning, he's giving us this instruction he's giving, telling us what he demands from us. But he doesn't say we're off on our own, does he? We're not on our own. He has promised, he has said I am with you always, always.
Speaker 1:So as we study God's Word, as we come and worship him in Spirit and in truth and then, as we leave this place and become the church scattered, we are to express our relationship with Jesus. We are to express to others the joy that we have found in Christ. One of the things that God does is he uses Our difficulties to let others see his power. He uses the difficulties in our life so that others can see his power. The scripture says it like this when we are weak, he is strong. And so, as we, we face all manner of things in our lives, no matter how difficult it may be, we can trust God that he loves us and that he is with us and he will never leave us or forsake us. So, even as we walk through a difficult time in our lives, jesus can use us to bring others to Christ. So I hope that you will will pray for me and and I will pray for you as we listen to these words of Christ and as we make application of these words in our lives, and that as we begin to come to the place in our journey where we want to experience that love in a personal way, that we will, we will recognize that he is with us and we're not by ourselves.
Speaker 1:You know, some people say that the the most important words that someone can say is is Near death. I want near death. I and you know the disciples thought that Jesus was gone, and so when he rose and transformed everything that we know by giving us eternal life, he was going to leave again, but he was going to go in victory, he was going to heaven. And so these are kind of his parting words to his disciples and to us, and so I think if those are the most important words that a person would say is kind of their last word to their family and their friends wow, what wonderful words that Jesus has shared with us before he ascended back to heaven.
Speaker 1:And so today we're going to give you an opportunity to receive Christ. We're going to give you an opportunity to come and experience what I've been talking about. We're going to give you an opportunity to express your desire to know Christ or to serve him. In the ministries of this church. There's a next step card in the back of the chairs and there's some information you can fill out there and on that you can put if you have had an experience with Christ today and if you would like to become a Christian, and we will get in touch with you and we'll talk with you and we'll walk with you through all of that. But as our praise team comes and leads us in our last song before we have baptism, we're going to be baptizing during the song and I pray that as we do this, that we will recognize the authority of creation is Jesus and he loves you and he wants you to love him.