So I want to share, this is another axiom, and this one comes to us, I don't know who this person is exactly, I mean, I looked him up, he's nobody I really know, or is known, but his name is Paul Lawler, and it touches at the heart of evangelism. This is what he wrote, discipleship that does not reproduce disciples is sterile discipleship. And I kind of added in parentheses, it's really not biblical discipleship. So again, the axiom is this. Discipleship does not reproduce disciples. It's sterile discipleship. And, you know, we're not going to be so much discussing methodology here. That's not our purpose in what we're talking about. It will be more motivation to do it. You can find all kinds of methodology books, lots of them. You know, how to go about it, how to make contact with people, and how to create conversation. I think that you could take the methodology books that have been written out there in evangelicalism, and you could probably stack them up to the ceiling probably two or three times over. You know, it's just, there's a lot of them out there. But I looked over a 2018 Barna report on churchgoers and what they knew about what is commonly referred to as the Great Commission. And you can have your Bibles open to that passage, it's a familiar passage. It's the very ending verses of the book of Matthew. So you just turn to Matthew 28 and the last few verses there of Matthew 28. And so they did a survey among churchgoers on what they knew about what is commonly referred to as the Great Commission. Get this, a full 51% had no idea what the Great Commission was. They didn't have a clue. So they were pretty astounded by that, so they thought, well, we'll help them out a little bit, and they gave a five-question quiz using different passages of Scripture, one of which was Matthew 28 passage. That helped the odds a little bit. You know, people were pretty good guessers. They kind of guessed, well, maybe this is what it is, and that helped a little bit. But you know what? Overall, if half the attendees of evangelical churches have no idea what the Great Commission is, we're in trouble. We're really in trouble. So let's, with that said, let's kind of dissect this passage of Scripture tonight. Matthew 28, and you probably know it's 19 and 20, reads, 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've commanded you. And lo, I'm with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. Let's have a word of prayers. We get started tonight. Lord, I thank you that we could be here tonight gathered to fellowship, to sing praises to you, and to come and to have our hearts challenged by the very Word of God that we talked about this morning. And I pray that we would take our stand upon the firm foundation of the inerrant, infallible Word of God. And I pray tonight that that Word would challenge us and motivate us in this area of evangelism. Lord, please use this in a great way, and Lord, help this church to grow and to be the lighthouse that you intended it to be in Yucca Valley. To you be all the glory, in Jesus' name, amen. These verses have endured a lot of poor preaching. through the years. I have probably been guilty of not really exegeting these verses very well myself. You know, and by the way, it's one of the ways we know the Bible is the word of God because it has endured so much bad preaching. You know, it keeps on, it's great. I and you probably have heard These two verses preached and the emphasis is upon what? The first word of verse 19. Gotta go. Just heard a message recently. I mean, I was live there, heard it. The message blessed my heart. I'm not trying to diminish, but the message was put the go back in the gospel. And the emphasis was on go, go, go, go, go. But, I don't know how many of you have studied original languages or not. You know, of course, the New Testament was written in Koine Greek as original language, very interesting language. And it gives you so many different shades of meaning because it's a dead language. It's not a spoken language, but it's a written language. And it's just, it really helps to understand. And the thing is, you don't have to go out and study Greek. There's other people that have done it. You can get a consensus of opinion from some of those people. But this is really a helpful place, helpful verse to know a little bit of the original language. The word teach in our King James Version here, go ye therefore and teach, is a Greek word, meradiahu, and it literally means make disciples. That's what it means, make disciples. Literal meaning of the word. To me, that fact alone really substantiates the axiom here. That discipleship that does not reproduce disciples is sterile discipleship. It all has to do with discipleship. And then beyond the etymology of the word, and the word teach here, is the grammatical structure of verse 19. The imperative of the verse, you would think just humanly speaking, looking at it, you would think it's go. But that is not the imperative in the verse. The imperative in the verse is on teach or make disciples. That is the imperative in this verse. The rest of the words, the go and the baptizing and the teaching are all participles. The imperative verb is teach. It's teach. Now, I'm not discounting the participles because it is how you carry out the imperative. In order to carry it out, you have to go. And part of the carrying it out is once a person has accepted the Lord Jesus as their savior, accepted the gospel, then he'd be baptized. So baptizing and then teaching is continual teaching and helping these people to grow in the faith. So that is all part of it. But they're all means to the end of making disciples. That's what Jesus wanted people to do here, was make disciples of his, obviously. The participles are critical. But then we come to the word sterile that's in the axiom. Discipleship does not reproduce disciples, it's sterile discipleship. There's a couple of dictionary definitions for sterile. We know one is to make something free of bacteria or other microorganisms. That is not the one. Okay, that's not the right definition. The second major definition for sterile is to deprive a person or animal of the ability to reproduce offspring, that's it. That's it. How many of you here know who Gary Larson is? Anybody? Name familiar? How about if I tell you what he's done? Anybody here hear of Farside, the cartoon books? Okay. Gary Larson was the author. The guy's a sarcastic genius, you know, that's all I can tell you. He's brilliant. He got the, you know, the car driving, the fly driving the car. And he's got a little bumper sticker on the Fly's car that says Maggot on board, you know. I mean, it's just funny stuff. And I own all of his books. I own every single one. There's one that has to do with Sterile. This dog is hanging his head out the window, and he's going to obviously, they're backing out of the driveway. He's talking to his little dog buddy on the sidewalk. And he goes, yeah, we're going to go to the store. We're going to go to the gas station. And we're going to go to the park. And then I get to go to the vet where I'm gonna get tutored. And you know, sterilization, rendering something incapable of bearing offspring. However, in the case of evangelism and sterilization, this axiom, it's a choice-based outcome. Fortunately, we can change our choice and we can reverse the outcome. Not quite like Fido coming back for the vet, okay? So it's a little bit different to that. Jesus' plan for the reproduction and the growth of Christianity is discipleship. It's His plan. And it was at the end of His life and He's giving us like His last will and testament here. It's His last command. And if we're not involved in doing discipleship, we're contributing to the demise of Christianity and the Christian faith. So it's really an important thing. It never ceases to amaze me that the Almighty Creator God, the one we talked about this morning, that talked to Job, starting in Job 38 and then on, those chapters there, that the Almighty Creator God could use any one of us in any capacity, let alone One as important as the reproductive perpetuation of the Christian faith. What an honor, what a privilege that is. I hope tonight you'll grasp just a little bit that it's not a drudgery, it's an honor that is ours to make disciples. So maybe we regard our involvement in Matthew 28 and 19 and 20 as a holy privilege. The plight of lost souls stays muted today. Muted today, it seems like we have a brand of Christianity that's kind of self-indulgent and comfortable, and you know what? You put modern Christianity up against the first century Christians, and I'll tell you what, it's embarrassing where we're at today. It's embarrassing. First century Christians were serious about this business. They literally, many of them staked their lives. They sealed their witness and testimony of Christ with their own life's blood. That's how serious they were about getting the gospel out. I think about the Apostle Paul. You think about him writing in Romans chapter 10 and verse 1, and he talks about, How serious was he about that? You back up another chapter into chapter 9, verse 3, and you'll see exactly how passionate Paul was for these Jewish souls. He says, so that I were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh. That's passion. He had drive. I mean, everywhere Paul went, he was a flaming evangelist, disciple maker for Jesus. Everywhere he went is his main business. I don't know if you guys have any kind of organized plan for going out and visiting people in the community, I don't know. And I think that's important, okay? If you do, that's great, and if you don't, well, here's what's really important. Become soul conscious, every one of you individually, become soul conscious in your everyday routine activity. and being sensitive to the Holy Spirit's prompting you to engage somebody in gospel conversation. You know, we become so used to not doing that that it seems foreign to us. I pray that, you know, the more you do it, pretty soon it'll become kind of a natural thing. It's not forced, it's not contrived, it's just, you go, wow. To be used of the Spirit of God to Make disciples. This is exciting. This is wonderful. I want to do it more. And make it part of your everyday routine activity. You know, we can memorize all sorts of plans for witnessing, and there are some good ones out there. I'm not denying that. I think that's great, and you should. I think having a plan, going into a witnessing opportunity, having some sort of plan, you know, take people, you know, in an organized way through and show them the gospel and teach them the gospel, teach them what they need to know in order to be saved, I think that's really important. But we can still, you can memorize all different plans and still be dead in the water. I think memorizing plans will give you confidence, and I think that's good, but you can still be dead in the water as far as effectiveness. Our effectiveness in discipleship is simply our becoming the conduit the Holy Spirit's gonna use in somebody else's life. And to me, that is, I'm always amazed when that happens. You know, you're just kind of going along and God puts this person here and he enables you to get a conversation started. And when you're done, you just find out, wow, this person is somebody that really needs to be saved. And it seems like their heart is being opened by the Holy Spirit. And God used me to do this, to be the human instrument here in this thing. You know, kids ask some pretty funny questions sometimes. A friend of ours some years back, his kids were young at the time, they're sitting around the dinner table, his pastor, by the way, sitting around the dinner table, and this one boy said, Dad, they're just getting ready to ask the blessing on the food for the meal, and he said, Dad, why don't we just pray one time for all the meals we're ever gonna consume in life? I don't think you're ready for some of these questions. He just kinda stood there like, well, that's not a question I anticipated today. But one I've kind of thought about, you know, contemplated, as I've struggled, you know, in a Christian life and living for Christ, is, Lord, why didn't you just take me to heaven when I got saved? You know, why didn't you just transport me directly to heaven? Well, it's kind of an obvious answer, and that's, that kind of make a lot of the New Testament irrelevant, because a lot of the New Testament is what? Telling us how to live on earth as believers. So, yeah, that's pretty obvious reason why he didn't do that. Why else would God keep us on earth? I found this quote from a pretty well-known evangelical leader, and I thought it was interesting. I don't often or always agree with this person in some areas, but this was pretty interesting. Listen up. If we were saved for fellowship, then we would be taken to heaven where fellowship is perfect. If we were saved for praise and worship, we would be taken to heaven where praise and worship is unhindered and perfect. If we were saved for the sake of teaching, training, knowledge, and wisdom, we should be taken to heaven where knowledge is perfect, end quote. And you know, I think I mostly agree with that, but I do understand what he's thinking, I think. And I think I agree with it mostly. In general, we know that life on earth is to be what? Lived for the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10, 31, whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God, right? That's our main purpose in life. And evangelism or discipleship, whatever you want to call it, seems to be a major way that we can glorify God. He gets glory when we witness for Christ. when we make disciples for Jesus. And I just can't help but feel it's one of the major reasons that God keeps us around. He wants us to do that. He wants us to be involved with this great thing. As well, remember that Matthew 28, 19, and 20 is Jesus' last will and testament to his disciples before he left the planet, which promise Here's the promise that he said. He said, Lo, I'm with you always, even unto the end of the world. And that promise is set in the context of his mandate to make disciples, teach, make disciples of all nations. You know, a person's last words are kind of significant, can be very significant. I worked as an emergency medic for a number of years in Salina. And I have been with people at death a number of times. And I think, too, here's an elderly person who's dying of a medical condition, a stroke, heart attack, something like that. And who am I? I'm just a stranger. I walk in. I'm attending to this person medically. and here's a person that's 80 or 90 years old, and I get to hear, I get to hear their last words. I think, who am I to get to hear that? It's like sacred, you know, last words. The last words of Jesus are really sacred, very sacred. How can we ignore it? That's a good question. But I think an awful lot of Christians do ignore this mandate of Jesus here at the end of Matthew 28. What thrilling thing have you done in life? I mean, just think about, you know, in your life, what thrilling thing have you done? You know, have you skydived? Probably some of you have. You ever been swimming with sharks? Anybody here ever climb Mount Everest? I don't know. You ever driven a top fuel dragster? You ever been a trapeze artist in the circus? You ever gone and competed at the Olympics in the downhill skiing competition? I've done none of those things. And probably most of you haven't either. But think about the most thrilling activity that you've done. I was telling Brother Todd, I said, one time I rode a bullet bike. 140 miles an hour. That is not recommended. And I just had this thought, you know, the bike had a little more, a little bit more, I was about to have it tapped out, but I was going 140 miles an hour, and as the thought crossed my mind, wow, it would really hurt if I went down at this speed, you know, just like this would really, I backed off. But that was pretty thrilling. I don't know, you can probably think of different thrilling things that you have done, but We could probably take the sum total of all of the thrilling things that we have done in life. And let me tell you something, there is no comparison to the thrill of genuine Matthew 28 evangelism. There's nothing like that. It's exhilarating to see people being turned from darkness to the light of Jesus. from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God's dear son. We get the privilege of seeing that. From serving idols to serving the Lord God of the universe. Wow. I marvel. It's so fun for me to, you know, I always ask people, what's in your hand? What do you enjoy doing? Can you use that as a tool? I like flying airplanes. It's great. And I love taking unsaved people up in the airplane. And no, I don't try to scare them. I don't put the nose at the ground and say, you know, if you were to die today, you know, no. But there's a sense where I've got their life in my hands. I'm piloting the airplane, they're sitting there. I call it my office in the sky. We've had so many great conversations with people, unsaved people. It's just a great, great thing. It's just what happens to be in my hand, but you've got things in your hand that are as valuable as that or useful as that. Listen, use those things. I mean, it could be quilting, it could be all kinds of different things that you do where you can invite an unsaved person in and have a gospel conversation with them. Do that. My neighbor. I took, he's a just recently retired Navy career man. And you look at him and you think, man, there's not a chance in the world. He bought my in-law's house just down the road from where we live, just right there. And you look at him and you go, there's no hope for a guy like this. He's rough, he's crusty, he's just an old Navy guy. And I took he and his son flying. pastor of the church there, invested in him, and started spending time talking to him, witnessing to him. Let me tell you something about Dan. Dan has become a believer in Jesus Christ. He's been baptized. He is now a member of Marysville Baptist Church. This is all recent. This is all recent stuff. It's so fun to see this guy, and he's the most unlikely candidate for the gospel you could ever imagine. But I'll tell you what. We're brothers now in Christ Jesus. And it is so exciting to be a part of that. But I've walked away from, you know, we live in a very religious realm where we live. People are steeped in religion all around us. And I've walked away from witnessing the gospel to very religious people who are filled with the pride of their own self-sufficiency and what they've done. I've walked away discouraged and feeling like a total failure only later It could be weeks or months later to get a telephone call and they said, well, I've done it. And I said, done what? Well, I really thought about what you said. And I believe that what you're saying is the truth. And I've accepted that. I've accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. That's happened. It's like, wow. And when you feel like a total failure, you don't have to be the most polished person in the world to lead somebody to Christ. In fact, God uses the weak things. to accomplish mighty things. One guy that I, he's a businessman and I had to do business with him a number of times and I find most of the time these religious people won't engage me because they're a little bit afraid. They don't really, they're not confident and they're not really confident in what they believe and so they just, this guy would, he would engage me and we would have some really, some pretty stellar, They were not hostile, but they were, eh, they were spirited. Let's put it that way. We'd have some great discussions. And I'd walk away, and I'd go, what a blind idiot. I was wrong on one count. He was not an idiot. He was blind, but he wasn't an idiot. And I witnessed to this guy numerous times. Every time it was just like, man, we've got, like I got nowhere, nowhere with him. And he was just so filled with his pride of his accomplishments and how that was going to be sufficient. I needed, I had talked to him in years, quite frankly, but I needed to talk to him about a business transaction. And I called him up and I told him what the situation was. And near the end of the conversation, he said, you know, I've got something to tell you that I think you'll find very interesting. And I was expecting it to be something related to his business. And he said, I have renounced my religion. He said, I have become a born again believer in Jesus Christ. I took the phone. I just stared at it. My wife is in the kitchen. I just, I was wondering if it's the same guy, seriously. I said, I think we need to talk. He said, yes, we do. And I'll tell you what, Brett and I have had some wonderful Christian fellowship through the years now. He is a believer in Jesus Christ. Unbelievable how he came to Christ, a guy that was so steeped in his religion. But it can happen. It can happen. I get a lump just in my throat just telling you the story. Such an amazing thing. We had a guy show up in town, he and his wife and daughter moved to Marysville because her half-sister lived in Marysville. Buddy had been involved with the Mafia, and we're talking about pretty high-level Mafia. He'd done, at that point, he'd done 25 years hard time in prison because of his Mafia connections. Two or three of those years were in solitary confinement. He was a bad dude. He was an enforcer. He hurt people. He collected debts. I heard that his wife was a believer, but he would not allow her to come to church. I thought, well, what an ogre. That's my first thought, until I found out. I mean, I went and talked to him. and found out that his first wife and all of his children had been executed gang style. I think I'd be a little paranoid about letting my wife out in public if that had happened. But he soon began to realize that our church was not a threat. So he started letting his wife come and daughter come to our services. And by and by, by and by, he started coming. a little bit at a time. I'd go over to his house. I had one of those French press coffee things, you know, and he loved that. I'd go over there and pick some fresh ground coffee, and we'd drink coffee and talk, witness to him. He started coming to church. After a couple weeks, I went over and I said, oh, buddy, what do you think? He said, you know, he said, I'm just trying to wrap my mind around what you're saying. He said, if you don't mind, I'll just keep coming for a while. I said, well, that's great, sure. And it wasn't long after that, he met me there at the front after the service, put that big hand in mine and he said, I believe I need to be saved right now. And he kept saying, he kept saying, he said, you don't know what I've done. God could never forgive me. I said, buddy, God can forgive anything. And finally he came to realization that indeed that was true. And he got saved that Sunday. Massive heart attack and died. I thought, you know, my wife and I, we have this saying, people we've led to Christ, and then when they pass away, we go, well, we just drug another one across the finish line. Got him all the way to heaven, all the way to glory. He would have been a pretty hard drag. He weighed about 337 pounds when he died. And that's about what he weighed in his prime, too. He was a fearsome guy, big, strong, powerful, built guy. A Jewish guy shows up at our services in Marysville. You think, what is a Jewish guy doing? He moved to a town about 12 miles south of us. I have no idea where the nearest Jewish synagogue would be. So he thought, well, you know, I'll try the Baptist church. He shows up, red hair. His name is Randall Solomon. He's 30, at the time he was probably about 35, 36 years old. And going out the door, the first time he's there, he meets me at the door. He says, well, he said, that was interesting. I want you to know I'm Jewish. I do not believe that Jesus is Messiah. I said, well, I said, I'd really like it if you come back. He said, I may. He did. And about Christmas time, I was preaching through some of the prophetic passages in the Old Testament concerning Messiah. And my wife said, she said, I don't do Facebook, she does. And she said, you ought to see what he's posting on Facebook. It's really interesting. She said, I think he's starting to get it. And some of the things, you know, he was actually talking about Jesus and the fact that, you know, he was Messiah and so on. And there was other guys in the church who were witnessing to Randall, witnessing to him. He met me at the door going out. He said, can we get together this week and talk? I said, sure. I said, what do you want to talk about? He said, well, I believe that I need to be saved. I said, you know what? We can do that right now. He said, really? I said, yes. went in my office and, you know, he was already primed. People had been witnessing to him. He knew the gospel. He understood it. It wasn't like I had to go through every step with him. He was just ready for the decision. And he made that decision that day. People in our church hang around forever. They were still, most of them were still there. He walked out of my office. He looked like the original glow stick, man. He is talking to everybody and saying, you know, what just happened to me? And he's telling them. And Randall's now been baptized. He runs our sound booth. He's one of the guys that does that. I'll tell you what. I don't care what the most thrilling physical thing that you can do on earth is, it doesn't compare to that. Doesn't compare to that. Are you actively, enthusiastically involved in Matthew 28 discipleship? I pray that you are. It takes a while to get going. It takes some courage. But I'll tell you what. The words of Jesus are so true. Lo, I'm with you always, even at the end of the world. Set in that context. He is going to be our helper. He's going to be the one. And when you walk away, you go, hey, that wasn't me talking to that person. Spirit of God working through me. I was just the instrument that was available for him to use. I've got guys I'm working on right now, people I'm witnessing to right now. I'm excited. I pray that next time I come, I can tell you some other great stories. I got a guy that's an aeronautical engineer right now. His wife is an employee of the Mormon Church. And we've gone flying and we've gone, we've just talked at length. He's got a ways to come. And I actually invited his wife to go along one time and she told him, she said, he's your friend, not mine. Well, at least I know where I stand, you know, understand that. But he is still open. And I am praying that soon this man will be one of the ones that I can tell you about next time we come. I very much want to hear your stories. I pray next time I come you will come and you will say, you know, you challenged us with evangelism. I want to tell you, you know, how God opened the door here and how this person is now, you know, part of this church, part of this fellowship. And I want to hear those stories. It would be a great thing to come next time and hear that. There's nothing like it. And it's almost like it's something that's infectious. You know, there's bad infections and there's good infections. I think every solid, independent, fundamental church needs a good infection, as people becoming infected with being witnesses for Christ, being disciple makers, as this passage commands us to do. This is a command of Jesus. Go ye therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I command you. And lo, I'm with you even, I'm with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. And I say, so be it.