Sunday, April 28, 2013

"go to the nations or better yet go next door"

Matthew 28:16-20

In the Bible the life of Jesus is covered in the book of Matthew. Matthew took 28 chapters to cover the birth, life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Contained within those 28 chapters are solid wisdom, life changing information, commandments and love. What I like to read though is the last chapter of Matthew because authors tend to save the most important information or restate the main point in their conclusions.

The final bit of Matthew is often called "The Great Commission" essentially Jesus tells the remaining disciples to go and teach others as He has taught them. They can accomplish these goals by making other disciples of Jesus, baptizing them, and teaching them the truth about Jesus, and to follow His Commandments. Jesus reminded them that He would be with them through it all.

Most people read this passage of scripture get excited and want to go to third world countries and tell others about Jesus. Or they want to go to low income areas and do community service while sharing the Gospel. And some even want to start a church and hope it will develop into gigantic ministry. All these are good goals and I see nothing wrong with them except sometimes I think we miss the point of "The Great Commission"

By this I mean, we are willing to spend thousands of dollars and month away from our families to travel to a foreign land and tell others about Jesus but yet we won't spend five minutes to tell our next door neighbor that Jesus loves them. We will go to a neighborhood that is twenty minutes from our house and share the Gospel yet we won't even share the Good News about Jesus with our sister or brother who do not know the Lord. We will try to build a church yet we don't take the time to build the people in that community. We will invest in s church building fund but yet we will not invest the Word of God in our own children.

The point I am making is this when Jesus said "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations" He was talking about your neighbor, brother, sister, cousin, friend, co-workers, etc. These people are the nations as well. This does not mean we should stop sending out missionaries, building churches, or the community service but it does mean that we need to look at our immediate surroundings as the mission field in our lives. Start with where you live, work, or stay. Tell those around about Jesus, make them disciples, baptize them, and teach them to live their lives for Jesus; fulfill the commission. Stay focused, you can do this.

"In His JOY!"

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