Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

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I still remember when I got my first Nintendo. I think I was about 8 years old. My parents made a deal with me and my brother that if we saved up half of what it cost, they would pay for the other half. I think it cost $100. So we saved and saved and saved, doing extra chores, not spending our allowance, and eventually we saved up our $50, and our parents kept their word and pitched in the other $50, and we bought a small plastic box that we would waste countless hours playing.

I had so much fun on that old thing. There were so many fun games, and even though the games today for the new fancy gaming systems are so much more sophisticated, it wasn’t about the graphics, it wasn’t about realism, it was just about having fun, and about completing the object of the game. It was about the challenge.

Well just a couple years later, the Super Nintendo had come out, which made the original Nintendo just seem so archaic. It boasted better graphics, better games, and a whole new challenging experience. I mean, the controller had 6 extra buttons you had to learn to use! One of my favorite games, though, was a game called Mario Paint. And this game wasn’t about the challenge. There wasn’t a mission to accomplish or a big bad boss to defeat at the end of the game, but it just about drawing and creating. You could color pictures, make funny little animations, and make up silly sounding songs. There really wasn’t an end to the game, because you could just keep drawing over the canvas or adding to the song to create something new. It was so much fun, and you could waste so much time, because the game had no purpose, no goal, no mission to complete.

But I’m afraid that so many people today are playing the game of life as if they were playing Mario Paint. They’re just having fun, doing whatever they want to do, but ultimately just wasting time, wasting their lives, because they have no real purpose. No mission.

Now, many in the world today will defend this way of life saying that it’s their life, and they can do whatever they want with it. But the problem with that way of thinking is that it’s not their life to do whatever they want with. We’re living on borrowed time. God gives us every breath we breathe. He’s our Creator, and we were created with a purpose.

Read Matthew 28:18-20

This passage has come to be known as the Great Commission. In it, we find our marching orders. This is what we as a church, and we as believers in Christ, ought to be all about doing. I’m going to focus this morning on just three parts of the Great Commission.

1. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus.
2. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.
3. And then the last thing Jesus said, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

But this might seem like an unusual passage to study on Easter morning. Why not preach on the resurrection itself? Why not preach on new life in Christ? Why not preach on the lasting effects of the resurrection of Christ? But actually, I’ll be preaching on all of those things this morning. You see, the Great Commission only makes sense in light of the resurrection of Christ. Christ taught a lot of things before He went to the cross, but He saved the Great Commission for after He rose from the grave. Why would He do that? If this Commission was so great, why not talk about it throughout His ministry? Why not begin His ministry with the Great Commission, instead of the Sermon on the Mount, and then spend His whole ministry training His disciples on how to carry out the Great Commission? I think the answer is because of the resurrection.

The Great Commission begins with Jesus stating that all authority is now His (v. 18). Now, why in the world does it say that all authority in heaven and earth was given to Jesus? Jesus, being God, has always had all authority in heaven and earth. So why does it just now say that all authority was given to Him? When Jesus rose from the dead, He showed us His power. He proved His message. If anyone has a doubt that Jesus is the Savior He claimed to be, just consider the resurrection.

There are a lot of people today who claim to have had near-death experiences which they came back from. But just the name of those experiences make them different from what Jesus went through. They’re called “near-death” experiences. They were near death. Which means they were slightly alive. In the words of Miracle Max in the Princess Bride, “There’s a big difference between being mostly dead, and all dead.”

Jesus was dead. There was no doubt about it. Everyone admitted that He was dead. The disciples believed He was dead. The Jewish leaders believed He was dead. The Roman guards believed He was dead. Jesus was dead, but on the third day, He rose from death! And we can have full assurance of our faith in Christ because He didn’t just die for our sin, but He rose from the grave, showing His power, and proving His divinity. If we’re going to call ourselves Christians, we need to submit to the authority of Jesus Christ. We’re not to follow the ways of the world. We’re not to worship celebrities. We’re not to bend to popular opinion or settle for doing and believing what’s easy. We’re to humble ourselves before Christ, who is our Master and Lord, and give Him our lives because He gave us His life on the cross. Jesus accomplished His mission. He was faithful to God the Father, and went to the cross to pay the price for our sin, so that we could have eternal life in Him.

And because Jesus rose from the dead, we now have a mission (v. 19-20a). Life outside of Christ is meaningless. People can invent purpose for themselves all they want, but it doesn’t make it true. People say, “My life is all about my family” or “Life is about making something of yourself.” But that’s not true. Life outside of Christ is meaningless. If we live as if there is no God, we have no purpose. Or, a better way of saying this, is that if we don’t live in Christ, we don’t fulfill the purpose for which we were created. We don’t get to make up a purpose for ourselves. God created us, and He’s the one who gets to decide our purpose. If we rebel against God, then we’re not fulfilling our purpose.

Life is meant to be lived in Christ. In Christ, we have purpose. So what’s our purpose? The short answer is that our purpose is to glorify God. We’re to point to God as glorious and great. We do this in a variety of ways. We love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We also love our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus said that we’re to be known for our love. And the greatest way to love our neighbor is to share the life-changing grace of God with them. We’re to go and make disciples.

We must not only believe it, we must share it. We can’t keep our relationship with God to ourselves. And I believe the more we understand the grace we’ve been shown in Christ, the more we share our faith naturally.

It’s like when you first fell in love. I remember when I fell in love with Abby. It was our freshman year of college, and I had to chase her down. And I’d talk about her all the time. My roommates got so sick of me talking about her. We’d be hanging out, and no matter what they were talking about, I always found a way to mention her, and to change the conversation to be about how great she is, and how beautiful she is. And this wasn’t something I had to consciously try to do. It just happened, but I love her. And when you love Jesus, you’re going to talk about Him. You’re going to share Him with your neighbor, and with your coworker, not in a forced or awkward way, but just like you’re talking about your best friend who you love, because that’s exactly who Jesus is. I’m not saying making disciples ever becomes easy, only that when we know Christ, and submit to His authority, we’ll go on mission to share Christ’s love with a world that needs it.

It says we’re to make disciples of all nations. Next Sunday and the week after, we’re going to hear from missionaries who are making disciples in other nations. They’ll be joining us via Skype, and the one we’ll hear from next week, who’s serving in the Middle East, is in such a hostile part of the world that we can’t even share exactly where he’s stationed, or else he could be found and killed. And some of you may feel called to serve in other nations as well. There’s certainly a need for more missionaries to go and serve. The Joshua Project estimates that there are still over 7,000 people groups that are unreached. This means over 7,000 people groups, over 2 1/2 billion people, live in communities where there are almost no Christians able to share the gospel with them.”

But even if you don’t feel called to serve in a faraway land, you can still have a part in reaching them with the gospel. A portion of every dollar you put in the offering plate goes to fund missionaries all over the world. And you can also pray. Please, pray for our missionaries! They’re on the front lines, risking their lives to make disciples of all the nations. But you know what? They would have it no other way. Because they’re living out the purpose for which they were created. And in the process, they’re experiencing Christ’s power, and provision, and presence in their lives (v. 20b).

I used to think that the last phrase of the Great Commission was an if/then promise. “If you make disciples, then I’ll be with you to the end of the age.” But that’s not what it is. He says, “Behold, I am with you always.” The reality is, because Jesus rose from the dead, He is with us always. He’s everywhere. He’s alive. He’s with us now, and He’ll be with us tomorrow. There’s no getting away from Him. You can try to run, but He’ll always be there. You can try to hide, but Jesus knows where you’re going before you go there. He knows where you’re going before you know where you’re going. You see, the lasting effect of the resurrection is that Jesus is alive, and that the Spirit of God is within every person who invites Him in. Because Jesus rose from the grave, we have new life in Him. We find our purpose in Him. We receive grace in Him, and we offer His grace to all who have yet to receive it.