Today, my message is entitled “Strengthened by the Word.” God has incredible plans for your life and those plans are not just about you. God does want to meet your needs, God does want to bring healing into your life, God does want to fix your problems, but that’s not the end of the story. God wants to bless you so that you can be a blessing to others. God wants to bless you so that you can impact your world for Jesus. God wants to bless you so that you can lead others to Jesus Christ. And those incredible plans that God has for your life are so incredible that you can’t carry them out in your own strength. You need God’s strength to do God’s will, you need to be strengthened by God’s Word.
The first passage we’re going to look at today is Jesus’ last words to His disciples, often called the Great Commission. The Great Commission is a summary of God’s incredible plan for your life. Yet, many believers are misled to believe the Great Commission doesn’t apply to them. The truth of the matter is that it applies to each and every believer, each and every disciple of Jesus Christ.
Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV) Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The essence of the Great Commission is that if you’re a disciple of Jesus, then Jesus’ plan for your life is for you make more disciples. And Jesus is going to go with you and give you the authority or strength to carry out that plan. Notice that the Great Commission isn’t about you, is it? No, it’s about all the people who are not yet believers, it’s about the people who are believers, but are not obeying everything Jesus commanded. The Great Commission has an intensely outward focus, not an inward focus. The Great Commission is about committing your life to something bigger than yourself, bigger than your needs and wants and seeing God strengthen you to bring it about.
What are some ways that you can obey Jesus’ commands in the Great Commission? You can tell people about Jesus. You can bring people to church to hear about Jesus. You can give money beyond the tithe to enable the church to reach more people. You can serve in a church ministry. You can influence others outside the church with God’s truth. And the list could go on and on. Bottom line is that if you’re a believer here today, God wants you to be a leader for Him. Everyone is a leader of one kind or another. You’re either leading people toward Jesus through your life and words or you’re leading people away from Jesus.
Daniel 12:2-3 (NIV) Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.
These verses speak of what will happen at the end of time when Jesus Christ returns to this earth. Everyone who has died will be resurrected. The believers will be raised to eternal life in heaven and the unbelievers to eternal death in hell. The next verse 3 is a Hebrew parallelism, two phrases which say the same thing in a different way. The wise will shine in eternity and who are the wise? The wise are those who lead many to righteousness. They will shine forever like the stars, they are the ones who will inherit everlasting life. So, today, we want to learn how to be strengthened by the word, so that we can lead many to Jesus.