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Short Clip

A DIVINE JOB DESCRIPTION

As we come to the Discipline of Disciple-Making, we come to our very own personal Job Description, left by Christ as the reason He saved us and left us here to serve Him through life. A question that should frame each day of our lives is: “Am I Doing What Christ Left Me to Do?”
God has always desired to be glorified by reaching this world with His message of love, His forgiveness of sin, and His offer of reconciliation leading to eternal life. God is not willing that any should perish, so He has always desired that the world to hear His message and repent, so that they may be saved. Because:
 
GOD IS A SAVIOR
 
God had Noah preach for a hundred years calling the world to repent. God established Israel as a light to the nations, but they mostly refused, so He set them aside temporarily.
God has for the past 2,000 years worked through His Church to spread His message of love, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation unto life eternal. God has future plans clearly written down for Israel to again spread His message around the world as Revelation 7-14 details. But for now, we the Church are His plan.
So God has always been glorified through people who would witness and proclaim His message of salvation. At this moment, God is working His plan of redemption through us His Church. Just as in the Old Testament, God clearly laid down His plans for Israel, as Deuteronomy says: they were to cling to the Lord, love the Lord, serve the Lord, and through their love for outsiders, they were to share His love, and declare His faithfulness. As the Old Testament details, Israel sadly disregarded that calling and commission, and so God temporarily sets them aside.
Now, as the New Testament opens, God has even more clearly told us His Church what He expects from us. In fact, at the climax of Christ’s earthly ministry, He gathers His Apostles, and in the power of the Resurrection, they as the leaders of the first generation of the Church were: given His Clear Commission. As we open to Matthew 28, we are opening to the amazing linkage to God the Savior’s plan, given to Israel but ignored by them; and now given to us His Church.
The magnitude of these words has never faded. These are the clearest marching orders for every believer alive today. Matthew 28:18-20 is the distillation of all that Jesus was doing in His Earthly ministry as recorded in the Gospels. All the rest of the Epistles are written as examples and explanations of the Great Commission to the Church. Revelation is the finish of the Church’s term of service, and the return of Israel to active duty. Please stand, and hear in no uncertain terms God’s plans, expectations, and desires expressed in our Commission:
Matthew 28:18-20

 


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