The Early Church's Reluctance to obey the Great Commission
In his book, 'Eternity in their Hearts', Don Richardson writes:
"Hundreds of millions of Christians think that Luke's Acts of the Apostles records the 12 apostles' obedience to the Great Commission. Actually, it records their reluctance to obey it."1
These are strong words indeed, but a close study of the book of Acts will reveal this to be the case. Prior to His ascension, Jesus commissioned His disciples to continue His ministry on earth. The four gospel writers all record slightly differently Jesus' parting command - generally referred to as the 'Great Commission'.
Then Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)
And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: in My Name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover." (Mark 16:15-18)
Then He said to them, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me." And He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then He said to them, "Thus is it written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day,and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high." (Luke 24:44-49)
Then Jesus said to them again, "Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." (John 20:21-23)
"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
Whichever account one refers to, Jesus' instructions are clear. We are to GO into ALL the world (literally, every nation and ethnic people group), and preach the gospel, make disciples, be a witness; teaching them to be obedient disciples too.
In Acts 1:8, Luke details what 'going into all the world' actually means,
"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."
4 TARGET AREAS
Jerusalem = strategic starting point Judea = own nation or ethnic people group Samaria = a similar but different people End of the earth = people of different language and culture, those remote and unreached
After Jesus had ascended to the Father, the disciples obediently returned to Jerusalem to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus had said,
"Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry (wait) in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high." (Luke 24:49)
Only One Reason to Wait before Going The disciples understood the need to wait for the anointing of the Holy Spirit. They were not to go into all the world and preach the gospel without the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Jesus never started His ministry until He had been baptised in the Holy Spirit, and they were to be no different. However, notice Jesus qualified the "waiting period". He said, "wait in Jerusalem until..." Once they had received the promise of the Holy Spirit, the waiting time was to end.
Let's see whether the church in Jerusalem obeyed the mandate they had received from the Lord Jesus.
Obedience or Disobedience? After the Day of Pentecost, the early apostles and disciples immediately began spreading the gospel and the church began to grow rapidly.
"Then those who gladly received his word were baptised; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them." (Acts 2:41)
"And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." (Acts 2:47)
"...many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand." (Acts 4:4)
"And believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women." (Acts 5:14)
"And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ." (Acts 5:42)
For the first five years, the church in Jerusalem continued to experience tremendous growth. Not only were multitudes being added to the church, there was a demonstration of the power of God through many healings, miracles, and deliverances from demonic spirits (Acts 2:43; 3:7-8; 4:33; 5:12-16). The church was a significant, successful, and God-anointed gathering of believers. Evangelism and new birth seemed to permeate everything the church was involved in. The church had grown a lot over a relatively short period of time, but was it walking in complete obedience to the mission it had been given?
Partial Obedience Careful study of the opening chapters of the Book of Acts will reveal that for all the church growth that was taking place, it was all happening within the boundaries of Jerusalem.
Five or more years after Pentecost, we read,
"And the word of God spread, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith." (Acts 6:7)
Jesus had told them to go into all the world, but they were still remaining in Jerusalem. Jesus had only told them to wait in Jerusalem until the coming of the Holy Spirit, but they had forgotten the "until", and were still waiting in Jerusalem. What were they waiting for? The Holy Spirit had come. They now had the anointing and the power to be witnesses. Were they waiting to be a big church? The church in Jerusalem at that time already had several thousand believers. Or, were they just comfortable in reaching out to their own people in familiar territory?
Whatever the reasons, and in spite of the 'success' they were experiencing, they were not obeying the Lord's command. They had obeyed it in part, but were in disobedience to the greater part. Jerusalem was experiencing 'revival', but what about the rest of the world's population who were not living in Jerusalem and for whom the Lord Jesus had come to save? I wonder if someone had asked the Jerusalem leaders if they were fulfilling their Master's command, how they would have responded? Would they have pointed to the tangible evidence of their success through the rate of church growth they were experiencing, or through the number of documented miracles?
The experience of blessing alone, or tangible results, cannot be the true determiner of obedience. Acting in line with the revealed Word of God is the only valid test of our obedience. The church in Jerusalem was highly successful and can be emulated in many ways, and yet it did not obey the Great Commission. By ignoring the mandate to go into all the world, as described in the passages of Scripture such as Acts 1:8, it was therefore missing God's agenda for Him to have a people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Revelation 5:9).
In Acts 8:1, after several years of remaining in Jerusalem, we read that a strong wave of persecution came against the church. As a result, all the believers, except the apostles, "were scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria." It is somewhat ironic that it took persecution to force the church into going outside of Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria, thus increasing its impact into three of the four target areas. However, the ends of the earth were still not being reached and the Jerusalem church had no plans or strategy in order to do so.
Time for a Substitution Whenever God finds people unwilling to obey His commands, He is forced into looking elsewhere for those who will. When strikers of a football team are failing to score goals, the team manager will normally resort to making some substitutions. He will remove one player and replace him with another, in the hope that this striker will score the goals required to win the match.
During the time of persecution we find God initiating a substitution. God raises up a man called Saul, one of the key persecutors of the church, who later became the apostle Paul. As the believers in Jerusalem are not reaching out to the Gentile nations, Paul is commissioned to "bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel." (Acts 9:15; Galatians 1:16). Later, when Paul starts reaching out to the Greeks (Hellenists) and stirs up some opposition through his bold preaching, the leaders of the Jerusalem church send him off to his home town of Tarsus, in Syria (Acts 9:29-30). This action puts a stop to the hostilities in Jerusalem and the next verse states,
Then all the churches throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. (Acts 9:31)
The church in Jerusalem had regained a peaceful environment, but at the expense of losing a man with God's heart for the nations. Paul's vision for the Gentiles didn't seem to fit into the vision at Jerusalem. Peter and the believers in Jerusalem seemed content to stick with the familiar territory of Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, where Jesus had ministered (see Acts 9:31-42). Some progress in the right direction is made after Peter receives a vision to help open up his heart towards the Gentiles, but back in Jerusalem it is hard going for the church to change its ingrained mindset, which had developed over a period of some 10 years.
In Acts 11:19-21, we find a turning point in the Book of Acts,
Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellinists (Greeks), preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.
Verse 19 highlights the theological mindset that existed in the Jerusalem church. Even while away from Jerusalem, in the cities of Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, the believers were only preaching to the Jews! These were predominately Gentile cities, but the Christians were only seeking to reach the Jewish minorities that lived there. Thankfully, included in the group who had been scattered were some men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who had not been conditioned by the teaching from Jerusalem. In Antioch, they dared to preach to the Greeks and a new church was born, a church that would replace the Jerusalem church in terms of significance and influence. By Acts 11, Jerusalem had ceased to be the front line church of its generation, and is scarcely mentioned again throughout the remainder of the Book of Acts (only when Paul or Barnabus, the Antioch church leaders, visit it). Although its status remained, its failure to obey the Great Commission to the degree that God wanted resulted in God needing to make a substitution. A new man (Paul) and a new church (Antioch) were required in order that God's purposes were carried out.
The church in Jerusalem was not a failure. On the contrary, it had been successful in many areas, including the first three target areas given by Jesus in Acts 1:8. However, it had failed to incorporate the fourth and vital target area of the "ends of the earth" - the other, unreached nations of the world - and so its prominence in the purposes of God was superceded by the new vibrant church at Antioch, spearheaded by the missionary activity of Paul (with the support of Barnabus).
What is the Measure of our Obedience? The Jerusalem church's leadership were primarily responsible for not setting the right example and not passing on to the new believers who were added to the church, the full extent of the Great Commission mandate given by the Lord Jesus Christ.
How about ourselves? How are we responding to the Great Commission mandate - with full or partial obedience, or are we ignoring His command completely? SMS
1 Eternity in their Hearts by Don Richardson, pub. by Regal Books, 1981 (Revised Edition 1984)
