The Great Co-Mission: Christ's Power and Presence

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
You're listening to the Christ Church Toronto Podcast, a recording of the Sunday Sermons of Christ Church Toronto.
Christ Church Toronto is located in Toronto's East End and seeks to practice the ancient Christian faith today. We would love for you to join us in the future. Until then, here is today's scripture reading.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:24)
Matthew 28, the verses 16 to 20
Now, the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This is the word of the Lord for our Church, and it is given for our good.

**Stephen Hsu** (1:03)
For the past few weeks since Easter, Pastor Kyle has preached on these post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, telling us of a story for the storyless, a mission for the fearful, an invitation to the doubting. And today, we'll hear about a power for the powerless, which is something I've really needed to hear as I've been studying for my ordination transfer exams. As some of you know, it's been more difficult for me taking these transfer exams than the bar exam that I took 25 years ago.
It's because of the seemingly real lives that are potentially impacted by me holding things up. And as my four young children have innocently been asking me low pressure questions like, daddy, what happens if you fail?
How many times will they let you keep taking these exams? What will you do if you never pass?
But thanks dearly to so many of you who joined our prayer team. I don't think I honestly would have passed through the first round of the exams this past week without your much needed prayers as I now prepare for final presbytery exams on June 5th. And without the Lord himself speaking to me, I sense through today's passage. So please join me in prayer. Lord, it is my prayer that your love would abound more and more in our Church. And we also pray for this as your Church, that you would open up to us a door for your word to declare the mystery of Christ that I might make it clear this morning. In the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, amen.
Through the almost 20 years my wife and I have been married, we've been doing premarital counseling together for about 20 couples of which I've had the privilege of doing weddings for most. But in preparing these couples for marriage, how would you judge my marital counseling skills? If I regularly tell couples for our sessions, as your pastor, the greatest goal of your marriage, the most important thing for your marriage I'm telling you both to do, is to make as many babies as possible.
Don't worry about learning how to understand or love each other, but just focus on how you can multiply yourselves. By 2030, you need to have your second kid, so that by the year 2055, you can have your first grandchild, and then have your babies grow up, to make as many babies as they can. In your wedding vows, you should include how many kids you promise to have, and plan out how to make enough money to fund your many kids. And because I'm Asian, I'm good with numbers, and I can tell you these things, but I'm actually not, and that's why I went to law school. This all sounds biblical, right? This creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply? Isn't that the most important thing? If you're judging me now, questioning my counseling skills, and maybe my pastoral skills, why does this sound strange? If Christians today regularly speak of Jesus' command we just read as a great commission because we are to make as many disciples as possible. Yet, you might say multiplying disciples by reproducing really is taught in the Bible, and of course we want more disciples. But cancer is also a fast multiplying growth. For those who have suffered through cancer, perhaps with your families here, you know that kind of fast growth is so unhealthy it will eventually kill you if you don't stop the unhealthy growth from taking over the whole body. If this very common missional way of thinking has ever made you wonder, perhaps we should ask this question of our mission to make disciples today. Is there an even higher purpose? I've pastored at a church that multiplied disciples so quickly it planted out seven churches in five years. So I'm not speaking theoretically, but out of real experiences as I've wrestled with this for a while as a former missions pastor of one of the largest churches in the GTA. Until we understand this, we won't have a joyful marriage if we boil marriage down to just making babies, and similarly, we won't have joy in the church if we boil church down to just making as many disciples as you can. So what I'm going to try to show you this morning is how a doubting leadership of a church can be sent out to make disciples of all nations, because our only hope is in Jesus' power and presence. We'll miss out on the joy in Jesus' promises here if we don't understand who receives this promise, what should we do, and how do we do it? The who, the what, and the how. First, we'll look at the who.