The Great Commission is About People
The Great Commission, which we hear each week in this worship service, focuses our attention on people.
“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.”
We know those “disciples” are individual people because we are supposed to “baptize them” and “teach them.”
At the heart of our primary calling in the time between Jesus’ first and second comings is cultivating vibrant, growing relationships with real people. There is no participation in the Great Commission without knowing people.
That is not easy, as we all know. People, whether strangers, friends, or our closest family members, require patient listening, active responsiveness, putting up with all sorts of quirks, and they even sometimes say or do genuinely unkind things. I doubt there are many here who did not hear or perceive something this week that made it difficult to be in relationship with someone else.
But Jesus calls us to affirm again that time spent understanding another person, serving another person, helping another person—is fully, and eternally worth it. The Great Commission elevates our neighbor as a worthy object of our attention.
Where, then, would God call you to greater patience and greater understanding for the sake of the Great Commission? If we really want to see disciples from all nations (including in our home, our neighborhood, and our city), then we will value the time spent listening to and serving those closest to us.
This reminds (and oh, does it ever remind us) of the need to confess our sins…
Prayer of Confession
Our heavenly Father, you tell us to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). And “if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him” (Lk 17:3).
“If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20)
Oh Lord, there are so many ways in which we speak and act against those nearest to us. We confess our tendency to think much of ourselves and little about other people. We confess how quick we are to see the faults in other people. We confess that we look past so many people with whom we could engage and to whom we could show concern.
Forgive us, Lord, for how we can affirm the Great Commission in principle, but value other things more than the people surrounding us. Give us eyes and hearts that delight in your work among people.
We thank you for life and forgiveness in Jesus, and so we pause in that confidence, to confess these and other sins to you, our loving Father…