Word of Salvation – Vol. 48 No.23 – June 2003

 

Gathering and Perfecting the Saints

 

Sermon by Rev J de Jongh

on Matthew 28:18-20

Scripture Readings:  Matthew 28:16-20; Colossians 1:24-29

Suggested Hymns:  BoW 136a; 193; 181; Rej 233; 342

 

Dear brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ.

A minister once gave a brief statement about his job that was included in Leadership Magazine. He said,

“I’m with a global enterprise. We have branches in every country in the world. We have our representatives in nearly every parliament and boardroom on earth. We’re into motivation and behaviour alteration. We run hospitals, feeding stations, crisis pregnancy centres, universities, publishing houses and nursing homes. We care for our clients from birth to death. We are into life insurance and fire insurance. We perform spiritual heart transplants. Our original Organiser owns all the real estate on earth plus an assortment of galaxies and constellations. He knows everything and lives everywhere. Our product is free for the asking. (There’s not enough money to buy it.) Our CEO was born in a hick town, worked as a carpenter, didn’t own a home, was misunderstood by his family, hated by enemies, walked on water, was condemned to death without a trial, and arose from the dead – I talk with him everyday.”

And you can only agree with Leadership Magazine’s conclusion: The church is the most amazing organisation in the world!

But what’s the purpose that God has for this most amazing of organisations? And how can we serve that purpose in our local situation? The Westminster Catechism is helpful when it defines the purpose of the church as the gathering and perfecting of the saints. And that’s a handy phrase to use to remind us of what God’s purpose is for the church. The Church is God’s tool for gathering and perfecting the community of believers.

Before talking about the church’s purpose, though, let us in the first place note that…

1. Jesus is King, He has all authority in heaven and earth and He will be with us always

The Great Commission passage talks about the head of the church, Jesus Himself. He’s not only head of the church, as it turns out – but all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him by His Father in Heaven.

And we understand authority, but it’s hard to imagine that kind of authority. When the minister we quoted a moment ago thought about authority, he thought of a company CEO – someone with a lot of authority in a global, multi-national company. And the Bible uses other images – King, Lord, Messiah. Matthew picks up on some of those in the first couple of chapters of his gospel – Jesus is born as the Christ, the son of Abraham – the wise men come to worship the one who has been born King of the Jews.

And all of these positions carry a lot of authority and power. But none of them describes completely the authority that Jesus has – all authority in heaven and on earth. Throughout all the heavens, everywhere on the face of the earth, what Jesus says, goes.

But it must have seemed like a surprising claim to make a few chapters earlier when Jesus took up Daniel’s prophecy and said before the Sanhedrin that, “in the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Especially when not too many hours later He was hanging dead on a cross with family and friends scattered around Him in tears. But on the third day He rose again from the dead, transformed from apparent defeat to triumph. It had looked like Satan had won, but instead Jesus was raised from the dead in victory and given all authority – even over Satan.

And that victory is the basis for the church’s mission from then on. These verses may be the end of the gospel of Matthew, but it’s more a beginning than an end. From here on the church begins to move out into the world, taking the gospel with it, witnessing to Jesus’ authority everywhere it goes. And that’s what we’re doing, too. We’re witnesses to what God has done through Jesus. We’re ambassadors of Christ – representing Him before the world. And Jesus promises that He’ll be with the church always, to the very end.

In the Old Testament God often promised to be with His people. They couldn’t succeed without Him. In the same vein Jesus was given the name ‘Immanuel’, ‘God with us’. And here with the Great Commission Jesus promises to live up to His name. Even though He’s about to ascend to His Father’s side, He wasn’t about to leave us as orphans. Through his Spirit He and the Father will be with us to the very end, and be our help. Hudson Taylor once said, “All of God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them. They counted on His faithfulness.”

And on that basis Jesus gives the church, through the apostles, its mission and its purpose.

2. The church, therefore, is to gather the saints and make disciples of all nations

Gathering the saints is mainly what the Great Commission is all about – therefore go make disciples of all nations.

And many of us have read or heard about different people who have done that. The apostles already began to take the gospel out into the world. And maybe we’ve read or watched videos about missionaries like William Carey, Hudson Taylor, or David Livingstone – they made it their life’s business to take the gospel out into the world. More recently we maybe think of folk from our own denomination who have served on the mission field, Rev Dr Bill Berends from the College, Pieter Tuit, or others that we know of.

And Jesus didn’t only call those people to make disciples, He called the whole church. Jesus calls each of us to be busy with making disciples as well. And many of us are in different ways helping to bring the gospel to people. Some of us are involved in Christian university organisations encouraging uni students to come to Christ. Some of us are involved in supporting organisations like the Bible League, or Middle East Reformed Fellowship. In these ways we support the spread of the gospel in the parts of the world where these organisations work. And some of us are busy challenging and encouraging folk we know to come to faith; praying for them; building relationships with them; taking opportunities to share the gospel with them in simple ways; giving answers from the Bible to their spiritual questions; hoping to lead them to Jesus so that they might be His disciples, too.

And you get a hint as to what discipleship is simply by looking at what these disciples have done in verses 16 and 17. They’ve followed Jesus to Galilee. They’ve obeyed Him by doing what He’s told them. And they worship Him. They’ve personally committed themselves to Him as their Master. And they’re the kinds of things disciples of Jesus do. Jesus calls us to follow Him, obey Him, worship Him, commit ourselves to Him. When a person gets to that point, then we know that they’ve become His disciple as well.

A guy called Ron Bennett has some good advice when it comes to making disciples. He says, expand your thinking:

* from event to process. Making disciples is more like raising crops than just harvesting them.

* think community not individual. God has given us a whole Christian community to support our endeavours. We don’t have to feel like we have to do it all ourselves.

* think gifts not gifted. God doesn’t only use people with gifts of preaching and teaching to make disciples.

* think conversion not decision. Sometimes we’re so eager to see external results that we get them at the expense of true conversion.

* think kingdom not church. Don’t make joining our particular church the criteria for whether you’ll disciple someone or not – even though that would be nice as well.

* think broken people not enemy. Satan is the enemy. Non-Christians are lost people needing to be found.

* think smarter not harder – mine seams that you’re already working further. See the network of friends your disciples have as potential disciples rather than thinking you have to start again somewhere else.

They’re good guidelines to use as we think about challenging and encouraging non-Christian folk that we have contact with. These guidelines are handy, too, if we don’t have that many non-Christian contacts, which is often the case for Christians who’ve been Christians for a while. Thinking smarter not harder means the first step is to mine a little further a seam that we already have, rather than to feel that we have to start again somewhere else for every new disciple. We may already have a contact that with a bit of effort could open up a whole new network of people to us who we can pray for, get to know, and where we can look for new opportunities for sharing the gospel.

That, then, is the Church’s purpose – to gather the saints. But there is more.

 

 

 

 

 

3. It’s to perfect the saints and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded

This means to nurture the community of believers in spiritual growth and maturity. Churches tend to be reasonably mindful about running Bible studies, encouraging people to regularly attend church, encouraging their young people in their faith to a point of professing their faith, encouraging members to get involved in ministry.

Not a lot is said about most of those things in our text. But this passage does at least mention teaching new disciples to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us. The purpose of the Church doesn’t stop when people have enough of an idea of the gospel to know that salvation only comes through kneeling before Jesus their King. The Church has also been given the job of taking these new disciples on from there, teaching them, growing them, taking them on so that they come to maturity in the faith and don’t stay spiritual babies forever.

After all, imagine for a moment a church that was only made up of babies and young children – a crPche church. We could put a two-year old up here in the pulpit. We could fill the pews with children no older than two or three. And then we could leave them to themselves and watch how things went for a while. And they’d have a great time. Some of them would run up and down the aisle. Some of them would bash on the organ or piano. Some of them would realise that Mum was gone and start screaming their heads off. It wouldn’t take too long and the place would be a madhouse.

And then there’s the rest of the week. If we expected them to go out from here and function day by day as a church we’d be pretty disappointed. It just wouldn’t happen. In fact a church of babies wouldn’t survive. And neither would a church of spiritual babies. And so God has also given the church to not only gather the saints, but to perfect the saints – to bring the community of believers to maturity.

It’s really about continuing in Jesus’ footsteps. He set aside three years to gather around Him a small band of disciples. Out of them he called twelve disciples especially, eleven of whom would become apostles. He began to train them and direct them on the way to spiritual maturity. He made them into fishers of men. He prepared them to train others as He had trained them, so that after He left and the Holy Spirit came on them, the purpose of the Church might continue through them, and through their disciples, and their disciples, and so on down to today.

Which means that we need to think as a local church about how we are working at perfecting the saints – at raising each other to maturity in Christ? Are there ways that we could be doing it more faithfully? Should we be more intentional about making it happen? And if we should, how do we go about that?

As well as that, we should be thinking as individuals about how we’re each involved in seeing this purpose come about. How are we involved in ministering to others in the church so that the unity and maturity of the congregation is encouraged? David Mansfield, the director of evangelism for the Sydney Anglicans, talks about a few things. Like helping believers establish solid foundations – and we can do that through things like Bible studies and other small groups.

Are you a member of a small group? Do you encourage others to be? Are you regular at church attendance? Worshipping God with fellow Christians and enjoying fellowship with them is important. God Himself says so. Are you attending church twice a Sunday? At the very least once? Do you encourage others to? Are you ministering to others in the church with the gifts God has given you? Are you looking for training in the ministries that you’re involved in? If you’re teaching Sunday School or Bible Studies for example, are you keeping your eyes open for opportunities to improve how you do that? Are you reading a good book or two each year? Are you attending a workshop each year so that you can serve God more effectively in that area? Are you doing a part-time Bible College course so that your general Bible knowledge improves?

And if it’s becoming clearer that you’re leadership material, are you working at preparing yourself for that? Are you reading good books on leadership? Have you found yourself a mentor to help you along the way?

And if you aren’t doing any of these things, there’s no time like the present to start. Make a commitment that you’re going to pick up on some of these avenues of personal growth this week and begin to put them in place.

In conclusion, as individuals within a church pick up on these kinds of things and put them into practice, the end result is a church that’s serving its purpose, a church that’s achieving its mission. Someone has said that in too many churches the Great Commission could be described as the Great Omission. It simply isn’t happening. May that not be true of this church. And too many churches aren’t seeing their members growing to maturity in Christ. They’ve stagnated. The status quo’s good enough. No one’s looking for progress. May that not be true of this church either.

George MacDonald, in his Anthology, makes a pretty hard hitting comment when he says, “Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because the Lord said, ‘Do it!” Or abstained once this day because He said, “Do not do it!” It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe in Christ, if you don’t do anything He tells you.”

God calls us to be a part of gathering together the community of believers. He calls us to be a part of raising them to maturity. The purpose of the church, this church, is to gather and perfect the saints.

Amen.