THE
GREAT CHARGE
By
Shelby
Floyd
It
is the whole duty of the whole church to preach the whole gospel to the whole
world. What we mean by that is we must take the gospel to every city and every town
in every nation throughout the world. Not only must we take the gospel to every
city and every town in every nation in the whole world, but also we must take
the gospel to every street in every city and town in every nation in the world.
Furthermore, we must take the gospel to every house, every condominium, every
apartment, on every street in every city and town in every nation in the whole
world. Even being more specific, we must take the gospel to every person in
every house on every street in every city and town in every nation throughout
the whole world.
What
is great about the great commission? The great commission is not called “great”
in the Bible, but I think that is a very appropriate adjective to describe what
is contained in that statement. In fact, it is not even called the commission.
It is the last interview that Jesus had with His apostles before He went back
to be seated on the right hand of His Father in heaven. What is so great about
the great commission? Well, there are several things that make it great. It has
a great author—Jesus Christ. It has a great scope—it’s universal; we are to go
into the entire world. It has a great message; it’s the glad tidings of
salvation. It is great in its work. God has condescended to allow us to be a
part of the work of taking that good news of salvation to every creature on the
face of the whole earth. It’s great in its authority; it’s power. It’s great in
its promises—forgiveness of sins; the promise of the Holy Spirit and of eternal
life. It’s great in its results. The church started with great results and
those results are still great in that they have spread throughout the whole
earth. It’s great in its beginning. The Day of Pentecost, Acts 2, is the record
of the beginning of the great commission being executed as Jesus had
proclaimed. It’s great in its priorities; it demands that we make that the
first thing in our life. “Seek ye first the
We can’t talk about all of those eight or nine aspects of the greatness
of the great commission. I have picked out just three. The first is the great
claim; the great claim of Jesus Christ when He said, “I have all authority
in heaven and on earth.” The second is the great message; the great charge;
the great commission--“Go ye unto all the world and
preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved. He that believeth not shall be condemned.” (Mark 16:15-16). And
then, finally, the great promise. Jesus said in the testimony of Matthew Levi , “Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the
world.”
DO WE NEED A SPECIAL CLASS TO INTERPRET THE BIBLE?
Now the Bible, I believe, is a book that can be read, interpreted,
understood, and obeyed by all of us. I want to strike at the popular prejudice
in our world today that there must be a special order of clergy, special order
of people, to interpret the book, preach the book, and explain the book. That
is not the case! The Bible is written in human language. The words that are in
the Bible were used even before the Bible was written. The words like baptism,
church, faith, hope, love, and regeneration, were in use long before the Bible
was written. Those were words that were used in common every day conversations
just like we use them today. Now when God gave us the Bible, He didn’t come
along and give us a new vocabulary, a vocabulary that had never been used on
the earth. If He had, then maybe I would be more prone to go along with the
idea that we need a special class of individuals to preach, to explain, and to
proclaim the great commission. But He didn’t do that. The Bible is written in
common ordinary words that were in use many, many years before these
communications were made to man. Therefore, they are used in the ordinary
interpretation or common understanding in which those words were used in the
long ago. But now, the popular prejudice today is that you really need three
revelations before you can understand God’s word. They say first that you must
have the Bible. God gave us the Bible, so there’s the first revelation. They
say that the Bible is dark and mysterious; it’s got a cloud over it; it’s got a
veil over it and nobody can understand it unless, number two (this is the
second revelation that has to come along), the Holy Spirit has to come down and
in a physical act upon our minds and our hearts give us proper illumination and
then we can understand the Bible. The third revelation is that there has to be
some priest or the clergy or the preachers, a special class of people, and then
they can read it, understand and only they can explain it to the people.
Right along with that is
the false idea that grew out of the dark ages, the period from about 600 A.D.
until the times of the reformation and that idea was that the head of the
church is the Pope of Rome, the papacy, and only he has the right to interpret
the meaning of the Bible. The idea is that he is the successor of the apostles
of Jesus Christ and, more specifically, one apostle, and that’s Peter. Now
that’s not right. The apostles have no successors today. When the President
goes out of office, and we’ve had a lot of them, every one of the Presidents
has been a successor to George Washington. But what are they called? Are they
called something different than the President? No, they are still Presidents.
Every senator and congressman that goes out of office and somebody succeeds
them; they are called senator and congressman. Every mayor in
Since we have no apostles
today, the great commission is still valid because it was the commission that
was given to the twelve apostles that we read of in Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John and Acts of the apostles. Actually, the great commission is uttered in all
four of the accounts of the life of Christ. Matthew was read just a moment ago.
When Jesus came unto them He said, “All authority has been given unto me in
heaven and in earth, go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing
them in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew
28:18-20.) Now that’s Matthew’s testimony concerning what Jesus said in His
last interview.
Mark makes it briefer, more
succinct, more simple. “Go ye into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall
be saved. He that believeth not shall be condemned.”(Mark 16:15-16.) Luke, in his account, said, “Thus it
is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on
the third day and that repentance and remission of sin shall be preached among
all nations beginning at
In John’s account, John is
more general in his account of the great commission, “On the evening of that
first day of the week when the disciples were together with the doors locked
for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with
you’. After He had said this He showed them His hands and the disciples were
overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again, Jesus said, ‘Peace be
with you. As my Father has sent me, I am sending you’, and with that He
breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive any one of
his sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgiven
them, they are not forgiven.”’ (John 20:19-23.) The idea there is whatever
conditions of salvation the apostles would announce, people would be forgiven
on those conditions. Whatever conditions they did not stipulate, people could
not be forgiven. All right, so we have announced the great commission in
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
We have pointed out that
the popular prejudice today that nobody can understand the scriptures and the
Roman Church says unless the Pope is setting in his chair, ex cathedra,
out of the chair, he is the only one that can legitimately make law. That’s a
false proposition and there’s not a word of truth in it and I’ll tell it to the
whole world. But the denominational idea is just as false. I don’t have any use
for the idea that it takes a special class of people to understand the Bible.
The denominational idea is just as false. It is that you have to have three
revelations—the Bible, the Holy Spirit has to come down in some physical act
and illuminate our hearts and our minds before we can understand this book, and
then there has to be a special order of clergy—pastors, preachers or anybody
else they can come up with—before you can understand that Bible. They are all
false. You can understand the Bible if you can understand the English language.
The Bible is written in our language and we can understand it if we can
understand plain English.
Has anybody here got a
problem this morning understanding the great commission? I don’t know of
anything that could be stated in a more simple, direct fashion that the great
commission. I don’t think we have any trouble understanding it. I think the
problem today is that we understand it too well and we just don’t do it.
THE GREAT CLAIM
Let’s look at the great commission and those three things that I
mentioned at the outset. First, the great claim. Jesus came to these twelve
apostles and said, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on
earth.” Do you realize that if Jesus Christ were to come back this morning
and appear right here in this assemble, in this worship, He wouldn’t have any
more authority today than what He had two thousand years ago when He said, “All
authority has been given unto me.” He has all authority in heaven. He has
all authority on earth. Now can you have any more authority than all? All is a
universal class and if He has all authority, He couldn’t have any more. But He
was not willing just to let it rest at that, He said, “I have all authority
in heaven and on earth.”
Power over Material Things
What are some of the things
over which Jesus had authority when He was on the earth? He had authority over
material things. When the people were hungry, He could take a few loaves of
bread and a few fishes and multiply it enough that four thousand people could
eat and have some left over and later with five thousand people to eat and
still have some left over. He had authority over material things.
Power over the Elements
He had authority over the
elements. When the disciples were rowing their boat across the
Power over Disease
He had power over disease.
When He would come around and people had blindness, palsy, or leprosy, all some
of them had to do was touch the hem of His garment and they were healed of
their disease. He had power over disease.
Power over Demons
He had power over the
demons. We don’t exactly understand about the demons. The popular idea of the Jews
in that day and time when Christ lived on the earth was that they were the
spirits of evil men that had departed; the spirits of those evil men had gone
on to the Hadean world and for some reason or another they had been allowed to
escape the Hadean world and come back and inhabit the bodies of some people
still living then. The Bible doesn’t deny it; it doesn’t affirm it, so I don’t
know to be honest with you. I don’t know the origin of them or why they were
allowed to be in people’s bodies, but what I do know is that when Jesus
approached people who had demons in them, the demons knew who Jesus was. They
would cry out and say, “Thou Son of David, why have you come to torment me
before my time.” They knew they were lost; they knew they were going to torment,
but in a temporary escape they asked why Jesus came to torment them before
their time. Jesus would not allow them to endorse Him. Most of the times there
was a reason for it, if you could confirm that He was God’s Son and confirm the
word, the message that He had, He would command them to come out of these
people.
Power over Death
Jesus had power over the
material creation, power over the elements, power over disease, power over
demons and He had power over death. In John 11, the dearest friends that Jesus
had on this earth—Mary, Martha and Lazarus—had sent a message to Christ that
their brother was very sick, even sick unto death. Jesus tarried for four days.
That means that Lazarus died on the very day that the messenger left the home
of Lazarus to take the message to Jesus. Because when Jesus got there they told
him he had been dead for four days. So Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that
if you believe, he would live?” They said they knew that he would live in
the resurrection and Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. If a man believe in me though he were dead shall he live?”
You see He has power over death. He went and they rolled the stone away. Jesus
said, “Lazarus, come forth,” and he was resurrected to life again. Jesus
has all power on earth. He could walk upon the water; He could defy the laws of
gravity, because He made those laws. He knows how to work in harmony with them
or He knows how to suspend them or defy them. He had all power on earth.
CHRIST
But Christ also has all
power and authority in heaven. In the great book of Ephesians, Paul said,
Eph 1:22-2:1
And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all
things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in
all.
NKJV
Jesus is the head of the church. No man today is the head of the
church. No church should wear the name of any man but Christ. Even John the
Baptist who was the best man to the bridegroom, said, “I must decrease, but
He must increase. I’m not even worthy to stoop down and unleash the latchet on
his shoes.” And yet there are people today who are members of churches that
honor the name of John the Baptist, instead of Jesus Christ. How many husbands
would allow their wife to wear the name of the best man, instead of their name?
That’s exactly what some religious people do. To honor any man above the Lord
Jesus Christ, whether it’s John the Baptist, Martin Luther, or any other human
being living on the face of this earth, is wrong! Jesus is the head of the
church. The church is His body. Jesus is the bridegroom. The church is His
bride. We honor Him by wearing His name. Christian is a name that honors Jesus
Christ. You can’t say Christian without saying Christ. Individuals honor Christ
as the head of the church, and as having all authority in heaven and on earth,
by wearing the name “Christian.” And the
church honors Christ by showing that he has ownership and headship—by being
referred to, as the
THE GREAT CHARGE
The great commission is
great because of the great claim that Jesus made that He, the Son of God, has
all authority in heaven and on earth. It is great in the second place because
of the charge or the commission that was given to the twelve apostles and
through them to us. David Livingston went into
Yes. He kept His word. God
is a gentleman, if you want to use that anthropomorphism—bringing God down to
where we can understand how He talks to us and communicates to us. A gentleman
keeps his word. The Son of God was a gentleman; He kept His word, and He said, “Lo,
I be with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”
When Moses died and was buried on the lonely peaks of
THE GREAT PROMISE
Now friends, we have a stupendous task today of taking the gospel to
every person in every house on every street in every city and town, and
country, in every nation throughout the whole world. But what we usually do is
lessen that commission, to fit our faith, which is weak. What we really should
do is strengthen our faith and bring it up to the level of the charge or task
that has been committed to us. David Livingston decided that since Jesus said, “Lo,
I will be with you, even unto the end of the world,” he went ahead and
carried out his task. And God will be with us today—no matter how dark, no
matter how great the task is, no matter how much opposition, no matter how much
we may seem to fail, He said He would be with us. The question is do we believe
He will keep His word and be with us in good times and bad times, good
circumstances and bad circumstances, when we’re rejected, when we re ridiculed,
when we’re persecuted, as well as when we are praised and encouraged. Yes, God
will be with us. He will be with us even unto the end of the age and, by the
way, that shows that the commission was not just to the twelve apostles alone,
it was to those who came along after the apostles and who were contemporary
with them.
There was a czar of
What is that charge that is
so great? He said, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on
earth. Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:18-20.)
Let’s look at that message. “Go into all the world and make disciples of
all nations.” Are we to baptize all
nations? No. What are we to do when we go into all the nations? Make disciples
of them. What does that mean? The Greek word there is “mathetuo,”
and it means to make scholars, to make learners, to make students. I know
every person in this audience can understand the Bible today. We don’t have any
trouble today studying and understanding the testimony of Matthew Levi, John
Mark, Luke, John the Apostle, Peter, Paul, James and John or any of the other
authors of the New Testament. We are commanded to make disciples out of all the
nations.
After we have made disciples
out of all the nations, then what do we do? Baptize them. What is the
antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun “them?” The nations! No. The antecedent
of “them” is “the disciples” that you have made out of all the nations. The
word “baptizing” is a participle, present active participle, and a participle
takes its action from the leading verb in the sentence. What is the leading
verb? “Make disciples” is the leading verb! Then you do what? You baptize
them—those that you’ve made disciples out of all the nations. How do you
baptize them? You baptize them into the name of the Father, of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit. That means you baptize them into a relationship with all three
members of the Godhead.
What do we do after we
baptize them? Do we leave them alone, never talk to them, and never spend any
time with them? No. You then have fellowship with those people. You have joint
studies in class situations with these people. You have periods when you
fellowship with these people socially and while you are doing all these things
you teach them everything that Jesus Christ has commanded us as our Christian
duty. That’s the great of the great commission.
First, The Great
claim—Jesus said, “I have all authority in heaven and on earth.” Second,
The Great message—“Go and make disciples of all nations and baptize them in the
name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and The Great
Promise—the promise that David Livingston relied upon when he looked and it
said, “Lo, I will be with you always, even unto the end.”
Friends, Christ is still
with us today. We are emphasizing the greatness of the great commission. We
have got to get out and start carrying out the great commission—setting up
Bible studies, opening up our Bibles, having people into our homes, teaching
people, setting up occasions when we can encourage people to be faithful.
That’s part of the great commission and we can all be involved in it. Not just
a clergy, not just a special order of people that have supposedly been called
to do this, but it is a task that is given to all of us. In Acts, when there
was a great persecution against the
If you have understood this
morning what you need to do to be saved and have remission of sins and be a
part of God’s family, we encourage you to do so.*
*Shelby G. Floyd
delivered this sermon