Great Manifesto for Church Education! Part 1

The last verses of Matthew 28 are well known for their importance when it comes to the church and missions – and properly so – and I have preached on them in the past with this emphasis. There is an outward looking aspect here in these verses. However, there verses also have a lot to say about the church as it looks to be built up on the inside. Here I am thinking specifically of these words in verse 20: teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you… But before we come to these words specifically, there are a couple of things to notice from the context of these words.

The first is that our Lord Jesus is addressing the apostles. He was addressing officebearers who would form the first New Testament churches and subsequently officebearers in the church today. These words are not something which have expired with the of the apostles. This verse outlines specifically the task of the church today. That will be our focus also when speaking of teaching. There are responsibilities that we have as parents in teaching and as teachers in schools, but that is from other texts for another day. Now, our focus will be on the teaching in the church of Jesus Christ as she makes disciples. Often you hear it said that teaching is a parental responsibility and not the church’s responsibility, but this is creating a dilemma that doesn’t exist in scripture. Parents have an obligation – we’ve seen that in the past – the church has an obligation to educate and instruct as well.

The second thing to notice from the context is that the Lord Jesus sends out his apostles with the commission to make disciples of all nations. This is the main verb of this sentence – make disciples. This is what the Lord Jesus is calling us to do as a church – make disciples. The main verb is not go which is often how many have preached on it, but the main verb is make disciples and then there are three tasks the church is called to do in making disciples – going out, baptizing, and teaching. These are three participles in the original: going (which is translated go in our English Bibles), baptizing, and teaching! Now in case you aren’t familiar with those grammatical terms – a participle is the outworking of the main verb. In other words: How do you make disciples of all nations? Well, first of all, by going out; second, by baptizing them, and third, by teaching them. We do see that there is a connection between baptism and teaching, also for the church. Those who the church baptizes she has an obligation to disciple, even until their . Teaching them from cradle to grave. Now our focus is going to be on the last of these three tasks we’ve mentioned – namely teaching, focusing on this phrase in verse 20: "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; …"

There are at least three things we can gather about the teaching of the church from our text.

1. The first is that the Lord Jesus would have the church provide complete and comprehensive teaching for those who are discipled. He says: all things – teaching them to observe all things.
2. The second is that the Lord Jesus would have the church provide effective teaching for those who are discipled. He says: to observe – teaching them to observe or we could say: teaching them to obey.
3. The final thing to note is that in these words the Lord Jesus would have the church provide correct teaching. He says: I have commanded you – teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.

We hope to consider each of these aspects of the teaching of the church of Jesus Christ. In short we could say that Matthew 28:18-20 is not only the great commission for missions, it is also, as one reformed preacher put it, the Great Manifesto for church education!