Well, there are two truly sacred institutions in Tulsa, Oklahoma as far as I can tell, two that they have to stand head and shoulders above everything else, and they just get almost a holy reverence. One of them, of course, is Chick-fil-A, and the other is QT. I think there is, I've never seen a gas station that gets to kind of respect, and I would say even veneration that QT gets. When QT announces they're putting a new store in your neighborhood, there is rejoicing, there is tears, there is joy forever, and I don't know if you know the whole story of QT, it's fascinating, but they've been around for a long time, and honestly they were no different than any other convenience store chain for years, and then in 1995, everything changed in 1995, one of their store managers was off duty, he brought two friends in, his two friends tied up the person behind the cash register, took him back into the freezer and beat him to death with a baseball bat. While they were doing that, the other off duty store manager just stood behind the cash register and acted like nothing was wrong, and then when the store emptied out, they robbed it. QT had the acumen to say, if one of our managers is killing the other ones something's wrong, and they asked themselves the question, what are we missing? And they went back to the drawing board, so to speak, and they said, why do we exist? What do we do? Who are we? Those are the great questions to ask. Those are great questions to ask, I think people who ask them often do a better job of keeping on point and being who they intend to be, and so today as we're starting 2021, like New Year, next week it's going to be better than last week. I want us to ask ourselves those questions. Jesus asked his disciples those questions, the disciples had seen him murdered three days, they lived in darkness and despair and then he returned to them from the dead and he calls them away to a mountain to say, all right now, let me tell you who are you? I'm going to tell you who you are. I'm going to reveal to you who I am, and I'm going to tell you what to do and how to do it. I'm going to give you your mission statement. This is the first what I call the normal Sunday of the year. This is New Year's Resolution Sunday, if this weren't in the middle of a pandemic, the church would be full of why? Because everybody who's made a New Year's resolution to go to church would actually be here this Sunday and it's a good time for us to answer these questions. Who are we? Who are you as an individual? Who are we as a body? What do we do? What do we do? What is our mission? What is our purpose? And as we read this, this great text from Matthew 28, don't panic. If you're like me, the worst things you could possibly hear when you were at church was there was about to be a sermon on Matthew 28. I knew that I was going to immediately be made to feel ashamed of how I'd wasted my life. We're not going there today, okay? This is River Oaks, we don't go there. So just relax. But as we do open the Bible to Matthew 28 and read together and really meditate on these rich, rich words, I want you to see that we are a community of disciples worshipping Jesus and making disciples who will worship Jesus. That's who we are and what we do. We are a community of disciples. What do we do? We worship Jesus and we make disciples who will worship Jesus. That is what we will do forever and ever in Revelation. We see that. That all a nation without number people from every nation, tribe and tongue gathered together as one with the angels worshipping Jesus. We haven't waited for that day. We've already started, but we are trying to complete that vision by making it an innumerable multitude that no one can count. Let's stand and read together from these great words. Matthew 28 verses 16 through 20. What's happened? Jesus has been resurrected. He's told his disciple that I want to meet with you and then we read this. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to his Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. This is for the reading of God's Word. All men are like grass and all of our glories like the flowers of the field and the grass withers and flowers fall, but not God's Word. God's Word stands forever. You may be seated. We are a community of disciples worshiping Jesus and discipling others, making other worshipers of Jesus. The first thing I want you to see in this text is I think it's missed. Is this great declaration? It really answers the question, who is Jesus? It answers that question. You see the disciples know something big is going on here. After the resurrection, Jesus tells them, come meet me on the mountain. Now that probably may not mean much to you, but it meant a lot to them. They understood. You see there were about three times in the Old Testament when God said something like that. He told Abraham, take your son, and meet me on the mountain. He told Moses, go get my people Israel and meet me on the mountain. And he told Elijah, and I'll meet you on the mountain. And his disciples knew something was different. This is a new age. We don't know what's about to happen, but we know what's happening. And he's going to meet us on the mountain and he's going to constitute us and he's going to tell us what to do. And they meet him there. And just like God met his 12 tribes and ate a meal with them on the mountain. So Jesus comes and meets with his 11 disciples, the new constituted Israel, and he visits with them. And the first thing that happens is they worship him. They worship him unique to the Bible. No other place is a man worshipped. And every other place when someone tries to worship a man, we hear these words. Don't do that. Only God should be worshipped. I'm just like you. I'm just another man. Not here. Jesus receives it. And acknowledgement that he is not just another man. Men and angels do not receive worship, but he does. And he makes these two incredible pronouncements. He says all, first of all, all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. Amazing. Now there's so much in that I can't fully unpack it, but I won't do my best because I'll want you to see that something has changed. Something is fundamentally different than it ever happened before. Just doing the sheer math of it will show you that, right? Up until then we've had thousands and thousands of years of God dealing with his people, of revealing himself to his people, giving his word to his people, sending his prophets to his people, and how many true believers do we have at that point? More than 11, but not many. Be generous. 5,000. Over 2,000 years since Abraham walked the earth, the church has grown. I'll be extreme generous. 10,000. Something's different now, isn't it? Less than 2,000 years after this meeting on the mountain, millions upon millions, every nation, on every continent except Antarctica, pesky penguins, everywhere. The name of Christ is held up today, right now, in every language, held up, and he's being given glory. Something has changed. What has changed? First thing he tells us is he has all authority. What does that mean? Well, we know as we unpacked a Bible that his death on the cross gave him authority over sin. He took authority over sin. Well, he hadn't had that before. Now, this is tough. Theologically, it's tough to prove things. And so, a lot of times we have to come and just say, well, we don't really know, but we kind of think, because we want to be very precise and careful in our theology. And so, had he already had that authority, and I'm going to tell you, evidently not, I don't think he would have said, I now have it if he had already had it, evidently not. And what we're told by the Apostle Paul is that at the cross he got authority. What does that mean? It means this. We were slaves under sin. We as humans were slaves under sin. How were we slaves? We were enslaved to this debt. This debt that we owed to love our neighbor as we loved ourselves. As debt that we owed to love the Lord with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our strength, this debt to obey him and to give of ourselves out of sheer love because that's what he was like. And we didn't do it. And so, every single day when we got up, we were a little bit more in debt because we didn't do it yesterday. So, we need to make up for what we didn't do yesterday, but we didn't really do it that well today either. If you grew up in the 70s and Tennessee, then you, whether you wanted to or not, you would know every word to 16 times. You live 16 times, and what do you get? Another day's over and you're deeper in debt. You know, Tennessee aren't you forward song? I need you to nod, Bobby. Okay, thank you. What does it mean? He's talking about these words, these days when the owners of coal mines constructed a fascinating new form of slavery. They didn't have to use whips and change. They used debt. And they gave you a place to live and they gave everything you ate. You had to get from the company store. There was no stores around. Every tool, every piece of clothing you wanted. You had to get it from the company store. There was no other place to get it. And so they charged as much as they wanted to. And it just so happened to charge you a little bit more than you ever made in that coal mine.
So, what do you say? St. Peter don't you call me because I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store. Paul's, Tennessee Ernie Ford was seizing on what Paul's talking about here. We're under debt. But what happened for us? Paul says in Colossians 2, you who are dead in your trespasses and sin, God has made a life with him having forgiven all your trespasses and cancelling the record of debt that stood against us. This he set aside nailing it to the cross. And then what was the result of that? He goes on to say it. He disarmed all rulers and authorities putting them to open shame. You're not a slave to sin anymore. Now look, I know what you're doing. I can see you right through that camera. You see through you to the button on the back of your collar. And you are yawning and you're saying, yeah, yeah, we've heard this. And it's not really that relevant to me. And I want you to know there is not a single thing in the world more relevant to you. You are not a slave to your sin. You are not, you are not defined by your sin. You are not named by your sin. What does that mean?
It means that you can put it away. It means that you are not what you have done. It means you are not what someone else has done to you. You're not an abuse victim. You're a son of God. You're not an alcoholic. You're a son of God. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but it means you have the ability to never stop trying. If you spend a year, if you spend a lifetime of slave to sin, then you're not going to be able to walk away from it in one moment. Maybe today, it's like learning to walk. You take one step today and then you fall down. Take two steps tomorrow, then you fall down. There's your legs strengthened. You grow because you are something new. You're something different. Your sin does not enslave you anymore. You're a slave to your anger and you've never gone a day in your life without without losing your temper and screaming at those that you love. If you know that feeling of looking at yourself going, why are you yelling in the conversation while you're in the process of yelling is going on in your mind, going, I don't know, but I don't seem to be able to stop it. Well, you're really shut. I'm not going to. Okay. If you know that kind of conversation,
I want you to know that you have the freedom to walk away from that. It's going to be hard. It's going to be one step at a time, one day at a time. Maybe a goal for you is to go two days without drinking and then three days and then five. There's no promise of going to do all at once, but the power is there. You're not defined by what you have done. It has authority over sin. It has authority over death. The Apostle Paul says in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead by a man has come death and by a man has come resurrection. You can think of death as this huge jailer and it is the grave as his jail and no matter how hard you run, no matter how hard you try to deny it, he is coming after you and he is going to suck you down into that blackness. But when he sucked Jesus down into that prison, Jesus exploded it from the inside and that's not the end for us anymore. So we don't live with hopelessness. We don't live with this belief as we look out at the world and we see that it's just not what we thought it would be by now as we look into the mirror and we realize, I'm not what I thought I would be by now. We're not giving into this hopelessness because when we understand that death is not the end, we understand that I got a lot longer than I thought
and one day I'll be infinitely more than I thought I would be and one day this world that I live in will be infinitely more than I can hope or imagine. We're not under regret. This life is but a short blink of blip on the screen compared to the fullness of eternity. Failure doesn't hang over us. Our best days are in front of us. That's the first declaration he makes. I have all authority over in heaven and earth. I have it all and then he bookends this command with his other promise and behold I will be with you even to the end of the day. I will be with you even to the end of the age. Now into the age to you you're thinking the great day when the sun explodes and the earth is consumed I guess. Something's going to happen in thousands of years. It meant something different to the apostles. The disciples grew up, they knew the Hebrew scripture. That's what they had grown up hearing and they knew that all these stories, these prophecies that talked about the sky growing dark and the stars being removed from the sky and they were talking about the destruction of Israel
and that was going to be the worst day ever. Jesus had already told them that they were going to live to see that day and they did. Most of them did. The day when families were destroyed and ripped apart when homes and then temple were destroyed, when their national identity was taken away from them. On that day, the worst day imaginable. Jesus said, I will be with you then on your worst day and him saying, I will be with you doesn't mean I'll be in the room. You're going to be cowering. You know think of like taking your kids just to get a shot right. That's kind of in the room but he's not helping. Childs of your cowering, crying, screaming, getting a shot. Jesus is not saying, I'll be in the room. I love what Jonathan preached on last week. When we are persecuted, Jesus says on our behalf, I am the one being persecuted. Why are you persecuting me? He is in us. He feels what we feel. He's not just around us. He is in us. He is through us. He is connected to us so tightly that what we experience, he experiences on our worst day. On our worst day. I will be with you always. I have authority on heaven and earth and I will be with you always. Okay. All right, then. If that's who he is, who are we? Who are the people that Jesus has commissioned? Jesus is coming to us saying, I have authority over the heavens and earth and I've got a job and that job is that everything on heaven and earth, they need to know that I'm the king. I am now installed. Death no longer has control over them. Sin no longer has control over them. And then we're like, yeah, yeah. And then he says, this shocking bit, I'm going to let you tell them. Now, be honest, that is not how I would have done it. If I had had angels and all authority in heaven and earth, space time and dimension, the ability to sky right, I think I would have come up with a better way of telling the world that there's a new king and a death no longer has power over them. But he chose us. So let's look at who us are. Who are the people that Jesus has commissioned? We're told first of all that he meets with the 11. He gives this command to the 11. His people, his body, his congregation, he gives this command to the church. Now, I can't stress enough how important it is for you to understand that the great commission is given to the church. Every pronoun in this passage is plural. He gives it to us. Why does that matter? Because you as an individual would never ever keep the great commission. If the only thing Jesus asked you to do was go to every nation and make disciples of every nation, teaching them everything that I've told you, that would take a while. You as an individual can't do that but as a church, as a body. We can't have done it as a body. When we think of individuals, if we focus in on that, what do we do? We shame the people who don't have the right gift fits. If you're not an evangelist, if you don't like going out and sharing the gospel with strangers, and we shame you and make you feel like you're less than. We boil the commission down. If it's my job to go out to every nation, I got to do it fast and the only way I can do it fast is if I boil the gospel down to just believe this, just watch this movie. But if it's discipling them and teaching them everything Jesus has taught me, that's going to take a while. But as a church, when we see it as a task for a body, then we see that if everyone plays their part, if the givers give, if those who have hospitality will open their homes, if those who are good with children will watch the kids, if those who are speakers will speak, if the singers will sing, if we will use our gifts, the gifts that he has given to every one of us, as one, then we complete the work. He gives it to the body, you, the 11, and us, the body that the as fossils on the foundation for the church, Paul tells us in Ephesians 4, the church. He gives this commission to the church, but more specifically, let's look at this. Matthew tells us something very fascinating to me. I don't want you to miss it. He meets the 11. He meets the 11. Do things stand out to me about that? Judas was not there. He's the 11. Judas wasn't there. But if there's 11, Peter was there. Peter was there. And Jesus was very clearly wanted Peter there. The angel tells the women in March 16, go and tell us disciples and Peter. Jesus is going to meet them. Peter was there. That tells me something. That tells me that no matter how great your sin the church can still use you, if you will keep coming back. Now, one of the people I studied this week for this text says that you could actually argue that Peter's sin was bigger than Judas's. It's not crazy about that. And you kind of mess with my noetic structure. He's like, Peter denied Jesus three times. Judas only didn't want them. Yeah. So we're not going to go there. It's ridiculous. I mean, it's kind of futile argument. You can play with that overlaunch if you want to. But it is fascinating. One thing you definitely see is this, the difference between Judas and Peter is that Peter came back. I don't care how great your sin is if you will just keep coming back. It can be forgiven. And God can use you. But when you stop coming back, when you give up, there's nothing we can do. Peter was there. Peter, who had sinned so grievously and so openly, Peter, who had denied his savor because he was afraid of a little girl, Peter was there and Jesus had restored him. Jesus restored him by asking, do you love me, Peter? Three times he made Peter say, I love you. You know that I love you. You know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus wants us working out of that love. The love that comes from being forgiven. The love that comes from being restored. That's who His church is. That's who He's commissioned. He's not ashamed of you. He wants to use you. He wants to use you as someone that is honest and open about the fact that you're a redeemed sinner. And who, because your redeemed sinner has loved to give, he meets with the 11, the 11 come together and they worship. And that just bless Matthew's heart, includes this, and summed out it. What did that tell me? He tells me that Jesus wants to send his church out to disciple the nations with all of your flaws, with your flaws. He doesn't say, now perfect yourself and as soon as you're perfect, I can send you, I can use you then, with your doubts, with your hesitations. I love that. Man, Jesus, love that. He doesn't demand that we perfect ourselves first. And that's what we want because we kind of want him to perfect us. I love the way Wesley, I can't remember Wesley's last name, but the book is called A Washten Waiting. And he talks about the Apostle Paul's prayer. Lord, will you remove this thorn from my flesh? And the way Wesley interprets it is, he says, basically God tells him, no, Pete Paul, I like you better with it. And I have so many friends who have experienced that begging the Lord, Lord, will you take away my same sex attraction? Lord, will you take away my my yearning for that which I won't get? Will you take away my discontentment? Will you take away my anxiety? Will you take away my alcoholism? And God says to all of us, I like you better with it. I like you better with it because you're going to be able to reach people who just don't think God could love someone like them. I like you better with it. Keep struggling. It'll keep you humble. It'll keep you needing me. And it will enable you to reach the nations. Now, that's who we are. We are his broken, beautiful, beloved people. And what are we, what is he telling us to do? What is he telling us to do? We're going a little long, but you don't have to drive home. So we're equal. We're even. I mean, I do something to pay attention to. The game doesn't start for another 15 minutes. What what does he ask us to do? The first thing we do here is we worship. Don't miss that before he tasks them, they worshiped. And that's the whole point. The whole point is that this multitude that no one can number would be worshipping. We are worshipping disciples, making worshipping disciples. We are giving him his honor and the praise and the glory. That's what the whole thing is about. That's why we were created so that we would be in front of Jesus smiling upon him, receiving his smile and reflecting it back and telling him, glory to you, blessing and honor and power and wisdom. Beatty, you are amazing. You're so wise. You're so beautiful. You're so gracious.
Looking at him with smiles on our faces, keeping our praises upon him because he is gracious. And beautiful. And I want to talk to those of you who haven't put stop yet. I want to beg you. I know it's hard. I don't think if I were you, I would be able to do this. But I'm begging you. Worship. While you're at home, don't just have this on while you're running the vacuum. Sing the songs. Pray the prayers. Worship. Worship. You need it. Your soul is crying out for it. Worship. Worship. Secondly, be a disciple. We're worshipping disciples, making worshipping disciples. Before we can go out, what is the word disciple mean? It means someone who's walked along side of the teacher and has tried to pattern his life after the life of the teacher. Before we can go out and disciple the nations, we have to be disciples ourselves. Before he sends, he doesn't just anybody out to disciple the nations, he sends his disciples out. Be a disciple. This is a big problem for us because we haven't done a good job in us being the American church. That's the only church I've ever been a part of. We haven't done a good job of making disciples. We've settled for making believers. We've settled for making converts. If you just will agree to this basic faith, if you'll agree to these words that Jesus died for my sins, we welcome you in. And honestly, whether or not to be disciple, we've kind of left up to you. I don't know all that that means. But I know it's wrong.
We have to be disciples. Dallas Willard, a writer that recently passed away that I love a lot. He says that we settled for believers when Christ has commanded us to make disciples. And he says he was on to say that he believes you can wrap up all the problems in the Christian church today by saying this, decisions are being made and actions are being carried out by believers not by disciples. If you're walking like Jesus, your life would be marked with love and grace, sacrificial kindness towards your enemies. Love is he's loved. Walk as he's walked. Worship him. Be his disciple and then go and make disciples. Going to them, spending time with people, baptizing them, bringing them into this community, giving them a new name and a new family, and teaching them to observe all the things that he's commanded. Our work isn't complete until the nations disciple, the nations he says, until the nations are acting like Jesus. Our work is not complete until the nations are acting like Jesus. And how do we bring that about by acting like Jesus ourselves? The people who love you, who look to you, will act like you act. That's a cheesy song that everybody loves and hates. It's just a big one big shame heap. The cats in the cradle. And it starts out with the little boy getting sent out of the room so the dad can get more work done. You hear the little boy saying, I'm going to be just like him. One day, I'm going to be just like him. And it ends with a boy telling his older dad, I don't have time for you. The dad hangs up and says, my boy is just like me.
That's a schmalti shame cycle for another day. But there's truth in it. If we're going to disciple the nations, the way we're going to do that is by living before them, by being the sermon we want them to hear. If we're going to teach them all to observe all the things that Jesus has commanded, then we've got to learn all the things that Jesus has commanded and demonstrate that, demonstrate it for the world. And as we do that, as we do that, the world more and more will become one nation, worshiping our God with us. Please pray with me. Our Father in Heaven, we pray that you would reinvigorate us this year to learn what you've commanded and to demonstrate what you've commanded to be who you commanded us to be so that as the nations see us, they too would be your disciples worshiping our Savior and living out the way he is commanded. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.