Let's turn to our key passage, Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 to 20. It's Matthew chapter 28, 18 to 20. We're going to just start here and then we're going to transition to the Gospel of John, but I want to tie the passage together and to try to make a connection because I've been asked to share with. We are to go into all the world and what? Teach. Teach them what? And I'd like to look at about five different things, and then we'll finish fairly quickly. Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 to 20. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." The first idea there, if we look at it grammatically from English, and my job is to teach you, so let's just do it by example. Okay? I'll show you how hard it is to fulfill this part of the Great Commission. Clue you in. This is teaching. Go. That looks like a command. But from a grammatical perspective, that is a command from English. But in Greek, it's a participle. It is a modifying element that refers to the make disciples. It can be translated as having gone do this teaching. That raises a couple of questions for me. Can I suggest that when you read the Bible, ask yourself questions? This is really going to be deep for you, okay? Go, having gone, what is the question that we should ask? First question should be this. Where am I going from? Right? If I am to go, that presupposes what? I'm someplace. Where am I going from? And what's the other half of the question? Where am I going to? And then there's a third piece in that, and I think that that may be the emphasis of the passage in some way. During that transition from point A to point B, I am engaged in something. You know what that engagement is? Teaching. Do we ever question what scripture is saying? Do we ask ourselves questions? Or do we just let it kind of slide off us like water on a duck's back? Here is, as we are going, if it is though grammatically correct in Greek, and how many Greek scholars do we have in here? Anybody's taken graduate level Greek? There is a construction that says if I have a participle that is an heiress and a verb that is heiress, I connect the two as though it is This is a command, and this is a command. And then a very wise person this morning suggested that what we would want to do is go through and see if we see that construction repeated. And there are some eight times where this construction of go and occur in Scripture. So I think we are probably on very solid ground to just stop right now and replay Seth's message to go. Let's go back. Where are we going from? Can I suggest to you that we all are going someplace? In just a few minutes, we will be what? Going from here. Can I ask you, are you going to be teaching during that time? I am going to work on Wednesday morning. As I am going, Am I what? Teaching. I am going home. Am I teaching? I am going to the store. Am I teaching? As we go, what are we to do? Be teachers of the gospel of God. I say this partly for shock value and very purposeful, but I think there is a very strong tie to the Catholic church tradition when it comes to church, and it is this. We have clergy, and we have who? Laity. And all of a sudden we have here a command to go and a lot of people will work very hard to make themselves exempt from that command. And this command is to who? All. But we make the distinction because of who the command is directed to. Oh, it's the apostles. No, we're going to look at that in just a little bit, but I'm going to tell you that Seth is precisely on point. Those that go are those who have had an experience with God and can share what God has done. They are what? A witness. As we go, we bear witness. Go ye. Who was the go? It's to all of us, and we are to go wherever we are going, but it's a lot easier for people like myself to sit in the pew and think that this is for someone else. Why? Because I'm not perfect. Can I tell you how much fear and trepidation I've had this afternoon? Dale, you don't have much on your plate. Goodness gracious, stop and think about it. I have to follow Ed Capps. How much experience does he have? and I'm supposed to share something with you? I don't have the experience. I've got a gentleman down here who is almost finished with his MDiv and has advanced degrees and stuff. I've taught in so many places where everybody there has more experience and education than I have. Folks, I barely got through college. We have people that graduate in magna cum laude and summa cum laude. I just graduated praise the lord of laude. I was told my freshman year when I walked onto campus at Bob Jones University, if you don't learn how to read, you will fail miserably. And you know what? They were right. My first year at school, I should have been on academic probation, but somehow I managed to fly under the radar everywhere I go. I struggled. When Lela and I came back to go do what it was that we were going to do after we had ministered in Colorado for about four years, three and a half years, she was going to get an accounting degree and I was going to go get a master's degree. And the dean of the School of Religion at the time says, Dale, your GPA is two points two-tenths of a point below what's needed. What we can do is offer you entrance into the MDiv program, and after two and a half years, if you want to convert to an MA, you can. Now think about that. If I've spent two and a half years on a three-year degree, would I go back to accept a one-year degree? Or would I just finish up that half a year? I couldn't do that. And so Lela and I did get radically different degrees. She never finished an accounting degree and I never went and did graduate work, but she got her MOM degree and I got my DAD degree. And any parents here know that those degrees are rather educational to say the least. But I've got people here. What about the boldness of Dr. Mahenu? And now, who's here? Do you know how inadequate I feel? How insignificant I feel? But Tony Miller, and Wally Higgins taught me back in 1981 a very important lesson because they were at a preaching service with all the missionaries that I had admired from my time from seventh grade through high school until I got to my freshman year at college and we were in Delta, Utah having the first evangelistic meeting and they asked me to preach and I said, Every one of you here should preach. And while he said this, you were asked to do it. God wanted you there, else somebody else would have been asked. I can't go because I haven't been called. It's a command. It's not a suggestion. It's not a good idea. It is a command. I came across a very interesting saying here as I was preparing through some of these thoughts, and that was this. It's been said, either you are going, or you are sending, or you are the one that needs to hear. And that sounds really good with one exception. To quote a movie, there are two indelible truths. There is a God, and I am not him. Anybody here who has all power to send somebody into the mission field? Anybody want to make that claim? No, I would modify this to say there are those that are going And there are those that need to be hearing. Those are the only two categories. Don't segment yourself to say, well, I will give so somebody else will go in my place. That sounds very much like indulgence. I will pay my way out of service. No. I'm a preacher. David is a preacher. Pastor Walker is a preacher. Pastor Hockey is a preacher. And I can't connect to some people that you can connect to. The Wilds of the Rockies were building a facility years ago back in mid-80s. And they would bring people out and they were working with businessmen trying to get all of these things worked out. And there was an accountant that was sitting there. And one day he had an opportunity to sit next to one of the accountants. And the two accounting people started talking, and the accountant witnessed to the unsaved accountant and got saved. And he said, I never listened to the preachers. You know why? Because they were just doing it because they had to. You are doing it because you want to. We can't excuse ourselves for all of these things. So what are we supposed to be teaching? How do we do this? Let's turn to John chapter 15. And I'm going to have to speed this up, I think. They told me I didn't have a time limit. but I told him it was okay, I would be respectful, so we will go through this rather quickly. John chapter 15, I'll tell you the verse in just a second. I did want to just lighten things up just a little bit before we go into this. I have undertaken a new exercise program. I was told that I'm looking a lot, about the same, looking really good. Somebody actually told me I look like I've lost weight. I think the exercise program is working. I got three very distinct exercises. I am doing the diddly squats, the lie downs, and the rest ups. That's my exercise program. Which sounds an awful lot like people, as Dr. Mahaney would say, glue to the pew. Right? John chapter 15 verse 27. And ye shall bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning. Who is Jesus talking to here? He is talking to who? They have been not named as apostle yet. I'm going to give you a different name for them. They are disciples. They are learners of Jesus. They are his followers. They're not apostles yet. At the risk of trying to single somebody out, do you just see how easy it is for us to segment this off to somebody else's responsibility? These are the followers of Christ. These are people like you and me, and they are His what? Witnesses. That suggests a very, very powerful thing. They have first-hand knowledge of what Jesus is like, what He can do, how He can transform your life. Anybody here want to admit that they have first-hand knowledge of what Jesus can do? I would think everybody should raise their hand and say, I know what Jesus can do because he saved you, right? Does anybody have first-hand knowledge of what Jesus did? Does anybody have first-hand knowledge? Did he save you? Then you have to be a witness. If something positive happened to you, you got a new job, How hard is it for you to keep that secret? Those of you that are in that romantic period of life, you got that new boyfriend, that new girlfriend, you got that ring. How many people try to hide that ring? I don't want anybody to know about it. If God has supernaturally transformed me, how can I not make a witness? you shall be witnesses of me, because you have been what? I think the reason why we want to sit in the pew is most of us really haven't been with Jesus. We may have been saved, but we haven't been with him. And that's kind of my first point. I'm going to connect two verses, and then after the service, since I truly, truly like discussing things with people that don't agree with me, please politely take me to task over this. But I'm going to connect two ideas and two verses here in just a second that probably, to my knowledge, have never been connected. But I want to know why I'm wrong. Okay? Let's turn to John chapter 1. John chapter 1 and verse 18. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. There are two inescapable truths that we have to affirm, and if you can reconcile them, then you are more God-like than I am. How many gods are there according to the Bible? How many personages are there in the Godhead? How hard is it to reconcile those two? Because if I affirm that there's only one God, and I deny the distinctnesses of the Trinity, I borderline on what? Heresy. And I'm sure there's a name for it, and all you smart people can tell me what that is. I don't know what it is off the top of my head, but it doesn't matter because if I emphasize that and exclude this, I am in heresy, right? Anybody agree with that? If I emphasize the Trinitarian aspects and deny the unity of God, what am I in? Heresy. Is anybody equipped here to do the teaching now to reconcile those two points of view? Or is it just something that we accept because Scripture affirms both? That's what I got to do. I affirm them. But look at how intimate the love relationship of the Father and the Son is. Where is Jesus? He is in the bosom, the heart of God. Do you see that unity? Can we overstate that unity and that precious relationship that they have? Now let's look at the person that wrote this book. His name is who? John. And at the Last Supper, where was John seated? next to Jesus and in John chapter 13 it says that he laid his head upon the what? The breast of Jesus. There are a lot of people here that I love, but I can assure you that if I laid my head upon them like I lay my head upon my wife, there would be a lot of people very upset. Because that is what? It's not what? But we, as Bible-believing Christians, are afraid to love God that much. Am I overstating the case? He who took us from darkness and brought us into light. He who took us from sin and brought us into righteousness. He who has taken us from rebellion and made us saints. He who took us from death into life. He who has pulled us from the ravages of hell and placed us into the heavenly. He who has promised us that if we are in Christ we have the fullest adoption and we have all the inheritance. When was the last time you just enjoyed Jesus? You just loved Him. Honey, I took the trash out for you. Honey, I changed the oil. Honey, I mowed the grass. Honey, I picked up my shoes. Honey, I did. Honey, I did. Honey, I did. Honey, I did. Honey, I did. Honey, I did. Lord, I did. Lord, I did. Lord, I did. Lord, I did. Where is that intimate love of just spending time with Him? That we could actually lay our head upon His breast, and if we are that close to Jesus, where does that put us with the Father? We are so fixated on doing that we have no concept of what it means to be in love with God. Oh, we got to go into the world and teach, absolutely, but you know what? You and I need to teach each other how to love God more. We need to teach each other how to love God more. To just give you a visual illustration of how I see this going and teaching goes, if somebody were to join me, I need somebody from the back to come up and join me. About the fourth seat up, dark suit, with the little girl next to you. Can I pick on you? This won't be too bad. Are you a believer? Anybody here convinced that he's a believer? Brother, I'm a believer, I love you. What's your name? Christopher. Christopher, I'd like you to go back to your seat. Okay, go ahead. Now just stop for a second. I put my arm around him and that expressed what? A level of intimacy that we can legitimately have even though this is literally the first time that we met each other, right? I put my arm around him. I am not focused on what we have done because we haven't done it, we don't know each other. We couldn't have done it each other, but do we have a connection because we love God and he's transformed us? Absolutely. Let him continue to go back to his sleep. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop, stop, stop, my brother. Not that I'm the spirit of God, but you didn't stop and ask anybody over here if they were okay. Let's keep on going. Is there anybody? I said go, but where's the teach? Right? Didn't I tell you that too? Yeah, that was earlier. Yeah, oh, oh. He's got a short-term memory, folks. Let's keep going. He hasn't even looked at any of the people on this side. Go ahead and have your seat. Now you're done. And you say that that seems silly, but doesn't that really illustrate the point for us? That when we love God and then we get ready to go, everything else becomes oblivious to us because I've got someplace else to be more important than doing what God asked me to do. Which brings us to our second point, which is going to be where I'm going to stop. I'll just do the last three for us very quickly. But our second point is this, that Jesus taught his followers to meet people that were different than them. The woman at the well. Jesus, why are you going there? There's something wrong. But Jesus says, I what? must needs go through Samaria. There was a need. How many of us, honestly, have gone out of our way to be with somebody different than us in order to share with them the truth? You don't understand. Yes, I don't understand. Help me. Help me understand. People are different than us, right? I was going through some of this in our Sunday school. We're going through the Gospel of John, and we're right now up to chapter 15. people that are different to us and one of my most faithful ladies who will be the one person that will come and hug you. Her ministry is hugs. Harriet, she's the one that did that painting for us there. We actually greet everybody on Sunday morning and we give everybody a handshake and she is the hugger. We had a family that came from Canada, they were Mennonites, they spent one service with us, they left, they wrote Harriet, and they said they have traveled over 12,000 miles, and the friendliest church that they were at was ours. A pastor in Santa Quin, Utah says, Dale, what do you do? I had a fellow that went down hiking. He spent two Sundays there. And he came back and said, those people down there love. How did you teach them? I said, I didn't teach them. I just tried not to wreck it. Just saying. Harriet, who loves on everybody, says, Dale, Years ago, we had a couple came and they all had tattoos on them. They were just all tattooed up and it was so hard to even say hi to them. talked to a co-worker. She just came up and started talking to me and she knows I'm the pastor and she said, I went to a church, I won't name the church because it wasn't one that we would want her to be a part of, but she said, I just felt like I needed to go, and it was like these people seemed like they're, I wore a dress, and I went to the service, and my dress, when I stood up, went down below my knees. When I sat down, it came up above my knees about two finger lengths. After the service, she said, a group of about five women said, honey, next time you come to church, let us know so that we can help you get the right dress so that you'll be appropriate. How would we respond if somebody came into the service wearing shorts? Would I go talk to them? Would I go out of my way to be with them? I was a senior in college working at the Walmart Distribution Center. There was a young man who was just a few years behind me, had quit going to Bob Jones, went to a different school, and he was telling me about his dad's church in South Carolina. And he was so excited one day and I just like, what's going on? Why are you so excited? And he said, we finally finished the project. I said, okay, what was that? He says, we finished the closet and it is now stocked with dresses so any woman that comes to our service can have a dress so she will be welcomed into the service. And we shake our head at that. Right? But how often have we avoided somebody because they were so different than us when we should have gone out of our way to go to that person? This is a rhetorical question. This is, think about it. Don't raise your hand. Think about it. How many unsaved people do you know? Yeah, I lived in Greenville. I went to Bob Jones University. I went to good churches all the way through. And you know what? I didn't know unsaved people. But just don't get a free pass now because unsaved people need to go out of their way. But you know what? There are people sitting here that need just as much help in learning all things. A young man, when I was in high school, got saved. His hair was right about down to here. And he wanted to sing. And they wouldn't let him sing until he cut his hair. He wanted to sing the song, Are You Washed in the Blood? It was more important to the people at that time that he look a certain way. as opposed to give a testimony of the saving supernatural power of God. Oftentimes we get this notion that people have to be just like us. How many of you are like you are now and it just happened overnight? Are anybody here going to admit that you're still learning how to live the Christian life? Yeah? So why are we not more kind to people that are different than us? Right? A parable that I made up that fits a lot of occasions, but this is where I'm going to end. A man decided he wanted to grow tomatoes. So he read up on it. He looked at all the Google searches that he could find. He prepared this field. He got it fertilized just right. He had a water system all set up. He went down to the local supply store and said, I want the best tomato plants that you can have. They sold him a bunch of tomato plants, he planted them at the optimum depth, he watered them, he went to bed that night and got up in the morning all excited, went out and saw that there were no tomatoes on his plants, so he pulled them all up. Went to the store and said, I asked for good tomato plants, I want new tomato plants, can you sell me some really good tomato plants? He brought them back, replanted, got up the next morning, and the tomatoes weren't there. So he pulled them up again and went to another store, asked for tomato plants, researched again, made sure they were planted at the optimum height, everything was right. The next day, the tomatoes were not on the vine. What did he miss? What did he miss? Time. time you and I are so fixated that people look like what? Me right now. I would like to suggest that it would be really scary if you looked in the mirror and saw me When did you, when did I become the mirror by which people are evaluated when it is the Word of God that evaluates people? And as a pastor, I have modified my thinking on this throughout the years. It is not my job to bring people where I think they should be. But it is my job to bring them as far as God will let me bring them. Because I may not be the one that brings them all the way. There may be somebody else that needs to water. Somebody else may need to cultivate. Somebody else may need to teach. But if we don't go, who will teach? My last two points were basically three points were this. There is an extravagant giving and worship with the woman who used the alabaster box of oil and worshiped and gave Jesus his feet. The anointing, I'm just gonna suggest that most of us have no concept about how to sacrifice. Am I right? And then the whole concept of worship, that's just too big to even begin to touch on. And then how do we respond to persecution in John chapter 15? Hardship comes in my life. What do I want to do? Pray for me. I lost my job. I need my job now. God, take this away from me. Take it away. God, take the hardship from me. But what does God always do with scripture? He teaches people how to do what? Have faith in him so that no matter what the circumstances are, we trust him. And we want to be critical of the disciples in the boat. When Jesus says, you have little faith, let me calm the storm and let me teach you. And I'm going to tell you that the disciples all learned how to face persecution with rejoicing because Peter was crucified upside down. They started and grew and grew and grew and they faced persecution rejoicing. They received a reward and they have that joy of being in the presence of God where they can, as it were, literally now lay their head on the bosom of the Father rejoicing in persecution that brings us full circle back to how much do we love God. Go. make disciples of all nations. Father, I ask that even though I've gone a little bit long, if there's been any exaggeration, a misrepresentation, please, please take it away. But if there is truth, if there is validity to what has been presented, let us be quick to move to loving you in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, brother, for that. I think very much from the heart, and to me the big takeaway is just realizing that it's about the relationship. It's about our relationship with our Lord and being close to him and loving him and knowing that he loves us. And it's out of that abundance of love then we're compelled, we're constrained by his love to go and make disciples and to teach them in the things of the Lord so that they might also enjoy that wonderful loving relationship with Jesus Christ. So it's really about the relationships and really appreciate our brother encouraging us to go to everyone and go to the people that are different, you know, different from you. Reach across those boundaries. They all need the same thing. If they're lost, they need Christ. And if they're saved, they need love and instruction. And the two go hand in hand, right? We proclaim the truth in love. And so, really appreciate that, brother.