Gateway Church's Podcast
Becoming a Great Commission Christian
A Gateway Sermon
It's wonderful to be with you. I was an India ministering when I received the invitation to be here. That was the end of July. And right there in India, God dropped the message in my heart that I was to preach this day. So it has been building in me for three months and you are the first group that I get to deliver it on. I feel like an arrow ready to be shot out into each heart here, amen? I want to speak to you tonight about becoming a great commission Christian. I believe God wants to drop something in every heart here so that you will leave with a different mentality, with a different outlook, with a different perspective. If you turn with me to Matthew 28, these are familiar words, but I believe you'll feel different about them when you leave. Matthew 28, understand this, Jesus came, shed his blood for the sins of the world. He rose from the dead and then over a period of 40 days, he was with his disciples. This was one of the last things that he said to them, critically important. He wanted each of his disciples to hear this. Matthew 28 beginning in verse 18, Jesus came to them to his disciples and said, "All authority and 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, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age." This was sacred to him. This was of critical importance to him, so he took his disciples and he didn't give them a suggestion or a great idea or a great possibility. This is the great commission. This is the mission, the job, the task, the privilege of the body of every single believer. This has been understood through the ages. That's why the gospel has gone to the entire world. That's why we're here today as believers. One missionary statesman Oswald Smith said, "The supreme task of the church is the evangelization of the world, and the church that does not evangelize will fossilize because God made us for this mission." You might say, "Brother, you don't understand I'm not a missionary. You don't understand I'm not a full-time minister. You don't understand I'm just saved. Hear me tonight. There is no such thing as just being saved. If you're saved, you're washed with the blood of Jesus, you're a child of God. If you're saved, the Holy Spirit lives within you. If you're saved, you're an ambassador. If you are saved, you are sent. It's a fact you have been made by God and saved by God with a divine purpose. You may be in this world as a business person. You may be in this world raising your kids. You may be a student, but there is a higher purpose, there is a higher calling. It is a mandate, global ministry, world mission, touching our communities. This is a mandate from God. First thing we must understand, for every believer, in fact, during the worship tonight, I said to myself, "All I'm doing is preaching what we just sang." Didn't we sing the words tonight, "All of me, all for you, living for you?" I have a friend from America that's been a missionary in Italy for over 30 years, and he was in Germany one time visiting a church there, and this friend has lived very sacrificially. Sometimes in a small tent, a trailer with his whole family, traveling around Italy with a missions team by choice because that was their best way of reaching the most people. He was in Germany, and a brother pulled up to the church service in a really nice car. My friend said to him, "Hey, man, that's a nice car you got," and the brother got offended because he thought this missionary who lived so sacrificially was picking on him for having a nice car, and he said, "That's not my car. That's the Lord's car. The Lord gave me that car. The Lord blessed me with that car. The Lord provided for that car. That's not my car. That's the Lord's car." My friend who was just trying to be complimentary said, "Yeah, your car, the Lord's car, it's a nice car." He's sitting next to him during the service, and he gets a no-handed to him, and it says, "Brother Douglas has arrived from India." This was a missionary in India, and he had just arrived at the airport in Germany, and he didn't have a ride, so my friend said, "Oh, man, what am I going to do? He needs to ride at the airport. I don't have a car." And then he thought, "Wait a second. I'm sitting next to the brother who has the Lord's car." So he turned to, this is literally true to the letter. He turned to him, and he said, "Hey, can I use the Lord's car to pick up this missionary at the airport?" And the guy said, "That's not the Lord's car. That's my car. You can't take my car and go to the airport." I was just with that brother. I said, "Is that exactly the way it happened?" He said, "Oh, yes. How quickly ownership changed. Oh, Lord, all for you, all of me, living for you. I lived, oh God, I just want to please you with every breath. Okay, here's what I'm calling you to. What gives you the right?" Oh, listen. He has every right. He's the Lord of our lives. We've been bought with a price. We now live to do as well. You know your highest and most sacred calling, be a disciple and make disciples. You know your highest and most sacred calling, know God and make God know. It's not the superstars who are doing it. It's every single believer, every single part of the body, equally saved, equally redeemed, equally called, equally with a divine mission. What does Paul say in 2 Corinthians 5 verses 14 and 15 for Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died. And he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. Do you understand that Jesus did not just come to give us forgiveness of sins and to rescue us from hell so we didn't have to rot forever? He saved us so that we would be his. He saved us so that from here on we would live to do his will. We would have an understanding. We died to our old life and we now live with the sacred task, the sacred commission, the sacred job to do. We must understand that Jesus paid for the sins of the world, but people will die and be lost simply because we didn't give them the good news. Paul asks in Romans 10, how are they going to hear unless someone tells them? A few weeks ago I preached the congregation. It's the church in which I was saved. They relocated to another area, but this is the church community I was saved. It was a little group of Italian believers and I came in there, heroin, shooting, drug using, rebellious Jewish rock drumming teenager. There was no superstar minister that led me to the Lord. There was no professional missionary that did it. There were some people there. Now they're in their 80s and I got to see them. I brought a stack of newsletters with me of all of our workers, all of our fire missionaries that are all over the world and I brought this whole stack. I said, you get a reward for every one of these. You were patient, just people, not highly educated, no great background, but they were patient with me and they prayed for me and they shared the love of God with me. And now my life can touch other laws and touch other laws. That's how it works. Global ministries, this is a sacred mandate. It's not just a mandate though. We must understand this as a mindset. See, once you realize I'm part of the Great Commission, I'm part of God's answer on the earth, I'm part of his plan, wherever he has me, in the local community, you see, you've got all these people from different parts of the world. It's just the same as Texas. You don't understand Texas is the same as Thailand. I don't want to offend the die-hard Texas, it's not a New Yorker, I'm not making a geographic judgment, I'm making a soul statement, a God's heart statement, Dallas is the same as Denmark. America is the same as Africa, it's souls and human beings, all beloved by God. And when you understand, this is a commission, it gets in your blood, gets in your heart, gets in your mind. You see the world differently, you relate to things of this world differently, we're in this world, we have normal lives, we have bless lives, we have full lives, we have rich lives, but we look at it differently. It becomes a mindset. Paul was on his way to Jerusalem, he knew God spoke to him to go, and he said, "Look, I know as I go and ask the 20th chapter, verses 22 to 24." He said, "I know prisons and hardship are waiting for me when I get there." What does he say in Acts 20, 24? "However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace." That's why I'm here, Paul, what about your own health, what about your own life, that's why I'm here. One of our workers in Africa was a former Hell's Angel, he's got tattoos from his neck down to his ankles, his wife with hair all the way down their back, and there they are working in Africa, quite a couple. He got shot a couple of years back, shot right through the leg. He needed medical care, and we urged him to come back, and he said, "The devil didn't send me to Africa, and the devil's not getting me out of Africa." In other words, my leg, my wound, that's not the issue. There are people here that need me, and I'm here to make a difference. Here, I just want you to hear some voices. These are people for whom missions, global ministries, it becomes a mindset, reaching the loss, touching my community, whether it's Southlake, whether it's South America, whether it's the ends of the earth, whether it's your neighbor, whether it's the person you live with, that doesn't know Jesus. Here's some of these people. Here's a missionary to Sudan. He said, "I will open the Sudan to the gospel, or die, try." DL Moody, famous American evangelist, he said, "I live for souls and for eternity. I want to win some soul to Christ." John Wesley, what did he tell his workers in England? "You have one business on earth to save souls, therefore, spend and be spent in this work." Henry Martin, I just want you to hear some voices, gave his life in Muslim ministry, died before it was 30. He said, "The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, and the nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become. You get the heart of God, you get the mind of God, you get the burden of God, you see the potential of how your life can make a massive difference. And as you sink funds and prayers into these workers around the world, it multiplies. Just hard-earned money multiplies and turns into souls, and get on your knees and pray and touches someone in the ends of the earth, and you share your testimony on your job or in your community or on campus, and lives are changed for eternity, history's impacted. That's what we live for. That's the thing that should excite us. Okay, the home team won, that's all right, okay, the stock market's strong, that's okay. Okay, you just got a new house, that's nice, but there's something bigger and better. There's something far more that God put us here to do. Becomes a mindset. I read a lot about different workers, I read about the suffering church, the persecuted church. I look at what people go through for the gospel. I was reading about Hudson Taylor, who was one of the famous pioneer missionaries from England to China, greatly impacted that country. I didn't know it until I read his biography. His dad had wanted to go to China, but was not called to, it wasn't able to. And when he found out his wife was pregnant, his wife was familiar, he prayed a prayer. He said, "Dear God, if you give us a son, grant that he should be a missionary to China." And then the Hudson Taylor was a boy, he said, "When I become a man, I want to be a missionary to China." And when I was first saved, there was all new to me, Jewish background, no church background, don't know the words, the terms, any of this stuff, and I heard about missionaries. I wanted to meet a missionary one day. I heard a missionary was coming in. The way I pictured it was like an 80-year-old saintly wife. You know, in the dark room, when she came in, you'd see her face gone. Sister, did you struggle with similar, one time a fly bit me, and before I could think I hit it, I had to repent of violence. It's like, I'm a missionary. You want to know what a missionary looks like? How many of you would like to know what a missionary looks like? All right? Look in the mirror. Look at the person next to you. This is it. This is the answer. This is the people. You know, we have our folks going all over around the world. But they do the same thing, whether they're in the Philippines or whether they're in India or some other country. They do the same thing they were doing right in their high school or right in their college or right in their workplace, Walmart, which is a big social thing I found out in the south, moving from New York. I didn't know that. You want to find? We lived in Pensacola for seven years, which is slow and very different than New York where we came from. The only thing happening at midnight was Walmart. We had students working at Walmart. Walmart was a mission field. You know, it's not that one day they became missionaries and just, "Hey, this is what we do. We're about the master's business. It's the mindset. It's the mentality. Souls. Reproduce. You have been born to reproduce, my brother and sister." I've talked to some of our folks that have gone overseas and I say, "Hey, what about the American dream? I mean, you're young. You've got a future. You raise a family here that have the best of everything. Why are you going to the ends of the earth?" And they looked at me sometimes with tears and said, "Dr. Brown, we have to go." Because it's a mindset. And I'll tell you again, most of you will not be called to leave where you are and go to the ends of the earth, but it's the same mindset, same commission, same task, same outlook. So everybody, we're all working together with what we have to get the great commission accomplished to see Jesus returning glory and establishes Kingdom on the earth. And that's our mindset, that's our goal, that's our sacred commission. Let me take it one step further. It's not only a mandate. It's not only a mindset that we must embrace, but it is also a measure. It is also a way in which we can examine our own lives and test our own attitudes and see what really matters. Many of you are familiar with the vision that the prophet Isaiah has in the sixth chapter of his book, and here's those famous words, "Whom shall I send? Who will go? What's his response? Here I am. Send me." Remember the Lord's car. What if the Lord said, "You know, I heard your worship tonight. I heard your singing tonight. I heard what you were saying about all of me for all of you." Okay, so you, India, you, China, you, Southly, you, okay, martyr. You know, in the New Testament, Jesus didn't even ask the disciples how they felt about it. He just told them how they were going to die. You ever see a basketball play, you know, they're huddling, you know, right? Maybe it's the Madison, you know, and the coach is huddling with them, and Don Nelson is, he's sketching out the play in there, okay, they're all watching, okay, what do you do? Okay, you're going to pass the ball in, you're going to break here, you're going to set a pick here. That's the way it is with us. All right, Lord, here we are. What do you want us to do? Okay, you, calling to stay here, raise up disciples, raise up funds, send them to them. Okay, you, I'm calling the ends of the earth. You, I'll point to the aisles and I'll only get scared. Martyr. Okay? Yes, Lord? Got it? Got it? Next? I mean, you studied out when you get home. Read John 21, and you'll see that Jesus tells Peter by which death he would glorify him. Because he had already signed up, listen, we love life. We live life to the full, but the measure of life is not what's in it for me. The measure of life is not how much I can accumulate or what people think about me or what I can accomplish in this world. The measure of life is obedience to God, bearing fruit for the master. You can look at this as a heavy negative thing, or you can look at this as an incredible privilege. Paul records some words. I would hate for them to be recorded about me. Second Timothy, chapter 4, verse 10. One of his cherished co-workers, Damas, Damas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. I wonder if that can be said of any of us. There's a purpose from God. There's a divine calling. But we love this present world more than the things of God. We love the praise of men more than the praise of God. We love the security of earthly things more than the security of the love of God. I believe it's a healthy thing for every child of God to ask the question, what if God told me, abandon my dreams and goals here in this world and spend the rest of my life preaching the gospel to people that I don't even know, maybe the inner cities, maybe the ends of the earth. And immediately said, but Lord this, but Lord that, why? Because it measures what we're really living for. It measures what really matters to us. Some of you have heard of Jim Elliot, martyred by the Aukkah Indians in 1956. He and a team of four others, five young men, five young men, we're going down to reach these people. Aukkah means savage. They were the savage among the Indians there that they were going to reach an Ecuador. They knew that their lives could be threatened. In fact, all of them had arms, they had guns, but they made a covenant not to use them to defend themselves. And amazingly, they began to make contact with these people who were scared of these white people, these foreigners, these different ones. They made contact and then once they went to actually meet together, these five young men were all speared to death. And Jim Elliot's widow, Elizabeth, was some others went back. Think of this. You talk about this being a measure of life. They went back and won the murderers of their husbands to Jesus and established a Christian community there. And Nate St. was the pilot who flew them in and out and was one of the martyrs. You know what Nate St. said shortly before this? He said, "People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget they too are expending their lives. And when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted." There was a pastor who got to know our fire community, our school of ministry and our community. And his emphasis was not the emphasis of financial generosity that this church is becoming so well known for. It was a message that I call carnal prosperity. In other words, how through the gospel I can get riches for myself. There was a wrong emphasis in it. He was a good man that loved the Lord, but he had this wrong emphasis and he got to observe our people for a while and he came to, he came to, you know what he said? He said, "Our people are into money. Your people are into souls." And I asked myself, "What am I into? You watch my life. Look at me over a period of time. Observe me in private. I'm not boasting. I'm asking. I'm searching my own heart and life. Watch me live. Watch the decisions I make. Watch the priorities. Watch the things that I invest my time, my energy, my resources in." What does my heart beat for? What really matters? What really moves me? Is it advancing the kingdom? Is it glorifying Jesus? Man, every parent with kids, you want your kids blessed. You want your kids healthy. You want the best for your kids, but the highest and best as they be raised up to glorify Jesus. The highest and best is their heart's beat to make an impact on a lost generation. You're getting married. You're coming together. What are the wonderful, incredible things? Now you can join forces and drive back forces of darkness and glorify Jesus and touch laws and have a multiplication of effort. So your lives count wherever you are, whatever station of life. Some of you may have heard of Brother Andrew. I'm just introducing some names you're familiar with, some not. Jesus is God's smuggler, a courageous man from Holland. In times of hostage crisis in the past, he went to the terrace and offered with his family's blessing his life in exchange for one of the hostages. Take me instead. He was with some of our fire workers at our fire base in Holland recently. He's in the 70s now. They spent time with him. He said his only regret was that he wasn't radical enough. One of the most radical men I know of. You know what he said? He said there are no closed doors to the gospel provided that once you go through the door, you don't care whether or not you come back out. You know what that means? My life is set apart to glorify Jesus. My highest and greatest goal is not self-preservation. Our goal should not be the preservation of the human race. Our goal should be the transformation of the human race. Where do you fit in all this? What is your place in all this? It's a question for every single believer to ask. It is a mandate. It must become our mindset and it's the measure of who we are. And this is what I can guarantee you as a child of God. I can guarantee you if you want your life to count, God will make it count. I was just praying and talking with some folks the other day and it hit me, not existence but effectiveness. If you want your life to count, if you will enlist yourself unconditionally, you say, "Brother, I'm already saved." Yes, I'm speaking to the same. If you will enlist yourself unconditionally and say, "Whatever the cost, whatever the consequence, I want to be used by God. It is the heart of God. It is the will of God. It is the desire of God, the purpose of God." And it has the ability to do it. He will make your life worthwhile and you will bear much fruit. And when you stand before Him, you won't be like the ones that Nate St. spoke about. And the bubble burst and you have nothing to show. You'll stand before Him. He'll say, "Well done." And you'll be full of joy with the fruit that you've born. I'm going to turn things over to Pastor Robert in a moment, but I just want you to stand with me just for one moment. I want you to stand together. And if you can pray this from your heart, I invite you to pray this prayer out loud with me. A fresh dedication, our lives for global ministries. That means right here, that means to the ends of the earth for the glory of God. So if in your heart you can pray this with me as I pray it, I want you to follow me as I pray. Repeat this after me. Your eyes closed. Say, "Heavenly Father, this night I hold back nothing from you. I ask you to hold back nothing from me. Here I am. Touch me so I can touch a dying world. Here I am. Change me so I can change this generation. Here I am. Fill me, use me, send me out as your ambassador to glorify Jesus, whatever the cost, whatever the consequences, send me, use me in Jesus' name." If you meant that, just put your hands together and acknowledge it before God. If you meant that, thank you Jesus.