I want to encourage you at this time, if you will, to take your Bible and open it to the twenty-eighth chapter of Matthew. We come to the last section of this great gospel. But I want you to understand something, this is not just the end, this is the climax. This is where Matthew has been going. This is where Christ has been moving through all of His life, to this point. This message is so important that I can say to you in all honesty that if you understand all there is about the rest of the gospel of Matthew and you don’t understand this, you have missed the point. This is the climax of the gospel of Matthew. It ends on a very, very dramatic note. Everything, in a sense, has been foundational to this particular encounter with the truth of Christ that we find in verses 16 to 20.
I want you to look at your Bible as I read that passage to you.
Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke unto them saying, All authority is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and 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 always, even unto the end of the age. Amen.
Now, as I just said, this is the purpose articulated for which all of Matthew is written and for which Jesus Christ came. It is a passage that we must understand. And deep down in my heart, I only wish that every person in our church fellowship and every person in the church around the world could hear the truth of this passage that I want to share with you this Lord’s day, and next. Not because I have so much to say, but because our Lord has so much to say and because I feel that so many people do not apparently understand the mission of the church. And when I say that, I mean people who are in the church. For many of the people who don’t understand the mission of the church, there isn’t even a thought along that line. They don’t even give a consideration to what the mission of the church might be. They seemingly show up whenever it is convenient or even frequently to enjoy all that is provided for them, to take whatever they feel like taking, to leave whatever they feel like leaving. They seem to want to be involved in the church to the degree that it serves or meets particular needs in their own lives. And it somehow escapes both their understanding and even their curiosity as to what the mission of the church really is…much less are they wholeheartedly dedicated to the fulfillment of that mission.
Now if we were to survey people in the church, even in our church, and ask them what they felt the primary purpose of the church was, we might get some answers like this:
Some might suggest to us that the purpose of the church is fellowship. That the church is a place to make friends with good people, honest people, godly people who strengthen your life. It’s a place to provide activity for the family, enjoyable activity, meaningful activity. It’s a place to enjoy music, the best of music, recreation, to cultivate relationships. It’s sort of a place to hang out at until the Rapture. It’s a place where love is cultivated and shared.
And all of that is certainly important because Jesus Himself said if we have love, all men will know that we are His disciples. But one step higher than that attitude would be the attitude of those who suggest that the mission of the church is teaching, that the primary objective of the church is to put out doctrine, to strengthen believers, to articulate theology, to give principles for practical Christian living, to train people for various responsibilities in the church, to instruct children and young people in obedience to the law of God with an objective of bringing them to maturity in Christ. And that certainly is a very important part of the church’s ministry because those who are given to the church are given for the perfecting of the saints which occurs through the Word.
But even a step higher than that would be those people who suggest to us that the real purpose of the church is praise to God. That the church is really a praising community, a community of people who exalt God for who He is and what He has done. And obviously they suggest to us that this is the central activity of heaven and that is praise and adoration and honor and reverence and awe and homage being given eternally by all the saints redeemed and all the angels who are holy forever and ever and ever. Therefore if that’s the primary responsibility of those in heaven, it certainly must be the primary responsibility of those on earth. In Revelation 4 and 5, we find that heaven is occupied with praise.
Now the fact is that fellowship is an absolute essential in the church. And teaching is equally essential and so is praise. But none of them and not all of them in combination are the mission of the church or the purpose of the church or the goal of the church or the objective of the church. None of them is why we are here. None of them.
You say, “Well then, what is the mission of the church?” Well, we have to start, first of all, with what is the motive of the church…what is our motive? The answer to that is very simple. We are what we are and we are to be what we are to be for the glory of God, is that not true? We have articulated that through the years that the primary greatest single unified motive of the church is the glory of God. In Ephesians chapter 6, as Paul is articulating the idea of salvation and how we are brought into the family of God and the body of Christ, he says in chapter 1 verse 6, “All of this is to the praise of the glory of His grace.” In verse 12, “That we should be to the praise of His glory.” In verse 14, “Unto the praise of His glory.” And over in chapter 3, “By Him is to be glory in the church.”
The primary motive of the church is to glorify God. Jesus even came into the world for that purpose and gave us an example. He came to show us the Father’s glory. He came to reveal the glory of the Father, John 1:14 says. He was the express image, the effulgence, the glory of God manifest, says Hebrews 1:3. So, Christ came into the world with one motive, basically, and that was to glorify God. And that motive has been passed on to the church. We are to give God glory, that is our reason for being. As the French would say, that’s our razon detra(?), that’s our reason to be…to glorify God in terms of a motive. But what about a mission? What is the mission that flows out of that motive? Now the answer will become clear to us as we take a look at redemptive history. Listen very carefully because this is, as I say, the ultimate message in Matthew because it is the climactic one. When man fell in sin in the garden, because of man’s fall, all of the human race was condemned to death in hell. The whole human race died, in a sense, in the sin of Adam. But immediately, God set out to redeem man back to Himself out of gracious love.
And if you remember the story, you will remember that when Adam fell in sin, and was very much aware of his sinfulness, and his alienation from God, he did not roam around the garden saying, “God, where are You? God, where are You?” It was God in Genesis 3:9 who came into the garden and said, “Adam, where are you?” And the intent of that is to let us know that it is God who initiates out of His own gracious love the saving work. Fallen and redeemed man, frankly, does not even seek after God, says Paul in Romans chapter 3. It is God who is the seeker. It is God who took the initiative to call man back out of gracious love. And from the first call in Genesis 3:9, “Adam, where are you?” to the last call in Revelation 22:17, “Come, the Spirit and the bride say come, let him who is athirst come and take of the water of life freely.” From the first invitation to the last invitation of Scripture, and all in between, God is a God who longs to redeem fallen man to Himself. God has been and God continues and will continue to seek to redeem people and ultimately to redeem the whole fallen world for the purpose of giving Him glory. It glorifies God when sinners are saved. It glorifies God when the unredeemed and separated from Him are brought back by grace into fellowship and transformed and made into members of His family.
So important is this on God’s heart that it even tells us in Scripture that He was in the world, 2 Corinthians 5:19, reconciling the world to Himself. God became a man. God invaded human history. God came into our world to do this which was the desire of His heart. And why was it His desire? Because God’s supreme desire is to glorify Himself as the absolutely perfect God, He has an absolutely perfect right and an absolutely perfect reason to glorify Himself. The way in which He seeks to glorify Himself is to redeem sinful men. That is the single greatest act of holy God. That is why in 3:10 of Ephesians, it says the angels are in awe of God in His saving work as they look at the church. That is why Peter said, “This salvation angels desire to look into.” Nothing glorifies God to the extent that the redeeming of a hell-bound, damned sinner does. And so, God desiring glory realized that the greatest glory given to Him by angels and men would come through the redemption of men set out to redeem man back. All men then become objects of God’s seeking love.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
