JMA Missions Mid-Month August 2025
The Great Commission In the New Testament Series
The Book of Hebrews
Buckle up, Coming in Hot!!
Matthew 28:19-20, 19"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen."
Hebrews 5:12-14, 12"For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."
I just finished an inductive study of Hebrews for the 2nd Year Biblical Studies program at BLLC. The writer delivers some stark warnings in this epistle. There are 5 warnings in total, and these verses are the opening of the 3rd warning called "The Danger of Not Maturing".
When we scan the supplied verses from Matthew, the most famous Great Commission, we see the major parts of it are 'make disciples', 'baptizing them', and 'teaching them'.
And compare with the passage from Hebrews. The writer is rebuking his audience saying, 'By now you should be teachers', but they, in fact, went the other way! Now, they need to relearn everything! "Go back to the beginning, Vizzini!" (Anybody get that reference??)
What we are looking at is the Great Commission in reverse! They went from meat to milk!
Teaching is listed last in the Great Commission, but it cannot be left undone. This admonition was to the whole group, "By this time you ought to be teachers." And that’s where Hebrews 5 calls us out. It's not as though the og audience of this letter was not teaching something. I believe that we can infer that because they were ready to abandon the faith as a group, they were busy convincing each other that they were on the right track. Formally or informally, they were teaching what they thought to be true. But they were going in the exact wrong direction.
And this is what the writer is calling it out. 'If you are not teaching Kingdom, you are not teaching!' (that's my paraphrase!)
The goal of Great Commission teaching is this: Ephesians 4:14, "that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting."
You can quote me on this: If we’re not growing in the knowledge of Him, we’re not going to have success at anything. And if we don’t press forward into spiritual maturity, we will never fulfill our mission. What will happen is that we will always be 'learning, and never come to a knowledge of the truth'. When you can quote more from celebrity preachers than you can from the Bible, you have already fallen backwards.
In other words: It takes a disciple to make a disciple.
Because 'teaching them to observe all things' doesn’t work if we ourselves don’t observe them! This is an important distinction, it's not just knowing a set of doctrinal facts! We do teach those, and it's incredibly important to know what we believe and why. But without the knowledge of Him, it's just religion!
Recently, I was invited to minister at a local church near me. I taught on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, an excerpt from Holy Spirit class at BLLC. Very simple, but very real-life with practical applications. Afterwards, several people came up and said something I’ve heard more than once:
“We used to hear teaching like this years ago. But now? Nobody teaches like this anymore. We miss it. We need this!”
The Great Commission isn’t just about evangelism. It’s about 'teaching them to observe all things' that Jesus commanded. The word for 'observe', tereo, means to keep watch over, to guard. Somewhere along the way, it feels like that part of that mission has been neglected.
Instead of pressing on to maturity, the Church in many places today often drifts from the truth, chasing fame instead of faithfulness. We settle for shallow, surface-level experiences, smoke machines and lights, and just one song please, and then we want to export that 'system' and call it missions! And we, like the Hebrews, 'have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to us as sons' (12:5), and that discipleship involves a mess, correction, growth, maturity, and teaching.
The Great Commission is discipleship. It’s about growing people into maturity. That’s the heart of it. Grow up. Get strong in the Lord. Crucify your flesh. And teach others to do the same.
Come on, somebody!!
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