Nations Required to Obey Jesus Christ

^{Matthew 28: 18-20} 

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
 
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.


For so long we've rightfully heard the admonition that we are to do our part to be obedient unto what we call the Great Commission. The problem is, we have unfortunately identified the Great Commission with "witnessing" about Jesus, rather than the totality of what it says. 

We are not only required to talk to people about Jesus an tell them how they can get saved, as important as that obviously is. We are also required to obey all that the Holy Scriptures teach, but to also command the nations they are also required to do so. 

What I want to get into in this article is to take the word nations and what it represents, and bring it down to the local level, which is really what Jesus had in mind when giving this command. He didn't actually expect individuals to go everywhere in the world. It wasn't possible at that time, and even today, it would take an extraordinary effort for even an organization to do so. 

His strategy was to set up churches in strategic locations, and for them to reach the region with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don't mean the apostles didn't travel around, what I mean is when they reached a specific locality and a church was brought into being, they would teach them what to do, and they would then reach out to their local communities. That's the general strategy.

As for the message, as Jesus said, we are to teach the nations to do whatever He commanded the apostles to do. Of course that didn't mean only the red letter words attributed to Jesus when He was physically on the earth. It meant the entirety of the Scriptures, which was confirmed throughout the many letters of the New Testament, which include hundreds of references to what we call the Old Testament. 

The exciting thing about that is we are to apply the Scriptures to every area of life, and bring those areas under obedience to the word of God. That is an awesome challenge, but one that isn't overwhelming when we think of focusing in a one area to become experts in. After we live out and learn that area under the direction of the Holy Scriptures, we can take our expertise and teach it to others, so they can learn to obey and live it out as well.

This includes having our individual life, home and church life in order. But we can go beyond that and discover amazing ways to apply God's word and commands to various segments of life that are then brought under His Lordship. 

That's the amazing call and responsibility we've been given. And that will play out primarily in the midst of the locality we live in. Some will be called to minster to other localities, but most of us will operate in the towns and neighborhoods we live in.