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I want to welcome you to day five of our look through Matthew chapter 28, which
means it's our last day in the book of Matthew. Super congratulations for
studying together through the book of Matthew. And yesterday we talked about
what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

In order to make a disciple, you've got to first be a disciple. You can't make
what you're not. But the command here is not to be a disciple.

The command here is to go and make disciples. Are you not just being a disciple,
are you making disciples? Jesus says in these verses there are three things that
you must do.

Let me read those verses for you again. "Therefore go and make disciples of all
the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you and surely I am
with you always to the very end of the age. " Three things you have to do to
make disciples.

You have to go, go and make disciples. You have to baptize, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit. And you have to teach,
teaching them to obey everything I've commanded.

First you have to go. You make disciples by going. Actually the phrase here is
as you go, as you go.

God may call you to go to a different place than you are now, but you don't have
to wait for that call to make disciples. As you go through life today, as you
walk through life in your business, while life in your family, you make
disciples now. You look for opportunities now to invite other people into this
life of following Christ, to help other people who are already in this life to
follow Christ.

This is not a command just for pastors, just for missionaries. This is a command
for every believer. All of us are to be involved in this.

Go. And as you go, go in two ways. You go in power and you go with purpose.

You go in power. Remember back in verse 18, "All authority has been given to me.
" That's the power that you go in.

You're authorized by Jesus to do this. That's a pretty good authorization. So
you don't have to be walking around with a false sense of humility, a false
meekness.

No, you can have true humility. The humility that knows you have the power of
Christ behind you. There's a confidence in that kind of humility.

You go in power and you go with purpose. You notice here, he didn't just say go
anywhere you want. He told us especially and specifically where to go.

Go and make disciples of all nations. He gave us a mission and he gave us a
direction in that mission. All nations.

You can have a heart for the person next door, but in that heart you also have
to have a heart for the entire world. God, where in this entire world do you
want me to go? You make disciples by going.

You must go. Second, you must baptize. You baptize the disciples that are made.

And Jesus tells us how to do it. Baptize them in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Baptism marks us as disciples.

That's what baptism is all about. When they were marked as disciples in the
early church, they often risked death. If everyone knew they were a disciple of
Jesus, they would be arrested and sometimes they would be put to death.

People today, when they are marked as disciples of Jesus Christ, there are still
many countries in the world today where they risk death because they decide to
be baptized. There are many other countries where the risk is the risk of
ridicule, the risk of being rejected. There is a risk in identifying yourself
with Jesus Christ.

But you must identify yourself with Jesus Christ. That's why Jesus said you must
baptize. And in identifying yourself with Christ, you're also identifying
yourself with the body of Christ.

Why is it important for you to be baptized as a follower of Jesus, as a believer
in Jesus? Well, first and foremost, because Jesus commanded it. He ordained, He
commanded baptism as a step that we take to follow Him.

And when you're baptized, you are picturing to the world what happened in your
life when you became a believer. So if you haven't been baptized after you
became a believer, I encourage you, strongly encourage you to follow Jesus as
His command. It's a step of identity.

It's a step of saying my sins because of Christ have been forgiven and I have a
new resurrected life in Him. And as you see disciples made in the ministry that
you have, encourage people to be baptized. It's not some church religious
ritual.

It's the thing that Jesus asked us to do. And He asked us to do it because He
wanted us to identify with Him publicly, openly, personally. So you must go,
Jesus said.

You must baptize. And thirdly, He said you must teach. In fact, He said you must
teach to obey.

That's the goal. Let's just walk through this. Teach to obey.

That's the goal. We don't teach information. We teach action.

It's a matter of the mind and the will and the emotions. What do you want people
to think? What do you want them to feel?

What do you want them to do based on God's Word? You teach people to obey God's
Word. You don't teach people to understand God's Word or to be able to memorize
God's Word or recite God's Word.

All those are good things, but they're all means to the end. The end is obeying,
doing God's Word. And if you teach people God's Word without helping them to do
God's Word, then you're not following the command of Jesus.

Now you say, "Well, I'm not a teacher. I don't stand in front of a bunch of
people like a pastor and teach God's Word. " You are a teacher more than you
realize.

Parents, you teach God's Word into your kids' lives more powerfully than you can
possibly realize. In your office, you teach God's Word more powerfully than you
realize by the way that you follow, by the way that you obey. So you teach
people to observe.

And then he says, "All, all that I have commanded. " All is the scope. We're not
just to choose a few favorite passages.

Here's the easy ones. Here's the ones that we want to do. Here's the hard ones.

No, we're to obey all of them. All what? What is the content?

All that I have commanded you. That's the lesson plan for our lives. Jesus'
commands are given out of His love.

He commands me to do this because He knows it's what's best for me. He knows
it's where the joy is. He knows it's where the purpose and life are for my life.

So am I living the commands of Christ in my life? And am I teaching others to do
that? That's what it means to be a disciple.

That's what it means to make disciples. Teach them to obey all that I have
commanded you. Now, we've been talking at the end of this week about these three
things that you and I need to do to experience the genuine life that God has for
us.

In our lives, we have to recognize the right authority. We have to experience
genuine growth. But then at the very end, Jesus comes back and He says, "After
I've told you to do this, first I want you to know that you do it in my
authority.

And then afterwards," it's like bookends. He says, "Afterward," He says, "I want
you to know you're doing it with this assurance. " What Jesus asks us to do has
His authority on one side and His assurance on the other side.

What's the assurance? "I will be with you. Surely, I will be with you always,
even to the end of time.

" That's the final words in the book of Matthew. Those are the fitting final
words in the book of Matthew. That's the absolute assurance that Jesus gives us
as followers of Him.

We live so much of life without any kind of assurance. We have decisions to
make, not sure of the right one. We have directions to go.

We're not sure of where to go. We have relationships we're trying to make work.
We're not sure of how they feel.

We're not sure of how we feel. We want to decide about what's next, but we don't
know what's next. Jesus clarifies for us.

He offers to us here the two types of assurance that we are in desperate need
for to live the kind of life that God wants us to live. You need daily
assurance, and you need eternal assurance. Now, where can I find the kind of
daily and eternal assurance that I need?

In the words of Jesus, "I will be with you. " I will be with you. I will be with
you.

That is the fact of His assurance. Now and at the very end of the age, now all
the way into eternity. When you look at this world, we have a world of need
that's around us, people that need to hear the message of new life and living
water and forgiveness and light and purpose and acceptance and healing.

And we have the message. By God's grace, we have the message that can meet a
world's need. And we have a wealth of power within us.

We have the resurrection power of Christ within us. How does it get out? How
does what we have within us get out into this world?

By listening to this word of command that's upon us, "Go. Go and make disciples
of all nations. " This is the end of our study of the book of Matthew.

We're coming to the end. And as we come to the end, the very end of this study,
the question, as you look back upon everything we've studied in this book, the
question is not, "How did it make me feel what we studied? " The question is
not, "What did I learn that was new?

" The question is, "What am I going to do? " And Jesus answers the question for
us. He doesn't leave any doubt about it.

He says at the end, "Here's what I want you to do. " If there was a test on
this, Jesus is saying, "Open book test. Here's the answer.

At the very end of all of this, all that I've taught you, all that you've seen
me do, the death that you saw me die, the life that you saw in me in the
resurrection, at the end of all of this, what should I do about it? " Jesus
says, "Here's what I want you to do. I want you.

I want you to go to all nations. And I want you to make disciples. And I want
you to baptize those people, helping them to identify with me.

And I want you to teach them to do everything, everything that I've taught you
to do, because that's where the life is. That's where the eternity is. That's
where the joy is.

" So as we come to the end of our study of the book of Matthew, let's pray
together that by God's power, by God's Spirit, we would be empowered to do and
would choose to do exactly what Jesus asked us to do. Would you pray with me?
Our Father, we pray that we would do what Jesus asks us to do.

We can't do it by our own power, but you've given us authority. We can't do it
by our own emotion, but you've given us assurance. So in your authority and by
your assurance, help us to today, take an action, take a step to do what you
called us to do, to make disciples.

Show us where to go. Show us how to help someone identify with you. Show us who
to teach.

Lord, as we see it, I pray that we would do it, not get too busy doing something
else, not get too afraid of the fact that we're not perfect. Because this is a
call for me. It's a call for every one of us.

Father, we thank you for this book of Matthew, for all that has taught us about
Jesus, and we thank you that at the very end, we hear these wonderful words, "I
will be with you. " I pray that you'd help us, empower us, strengthen us to live
in that assurance today. In your name, we pray this together, amen.

Well, thank you for joining us for this study of the book of Matthew together. I
invite you to join us next week as we continue in Drive Time Devotions with the
next book that we'll be studying together, or you can go to drivetimedevotions.
com and choose from any of the New Testament books to study and many of the Old
Testament books to study from there.

So you can sort of put your own study plan together, how you want to do it, or
you can join us together for what we'll be studying next week together. Thanks
for being a part of studying God's Word in Drive Time Devotions.