This sermon delves into the often neglected second part of the Great Commission, emphasizing the importance of not only making converts but also transforming them into disciples who obey all that Jesus commanded. It uses the analogy of a carpenter shop to illustrate the imbalance in focusing on evangelism over discipleship. The sermon highlights the need for believers to have a radical attitude towards serving God over material wealth, addressing the dangers of idolizing money. It also explores the concept of true worship, distinguishing it from mere praise and emphasizing the intimate connection it fosters with God.

We continue our study today on all that Jesus taught. Based on Matthew 28 verse 20, where in the Great Commission Jesus said, after making disciples of all nations and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we have to then go on from there to teach them to do all that he had commanded and taught. So this, as I've said in our previous sessions, is the neglected half of the Great Commission. The first part of the Great Commission, Mark 16, 15 is generally being done more by Christians than the second part. Because when we think of this phrase, all that I have commanded you, it covers a wide range of subjects, wide range of areas where we need to, first of all, do what Jesus has commanded us in our own lives and then teach others also to do it. Otherwise, the Great Commission remains incomplete. Jesus was a carpenter for the first part of his life up to the age of 30. And I want to use an illustration from a carpenter shop. Supposing Jesus, as a master carpenter, gets an order, some business that wants a hundred tables to be made. And Jesus employs a lot of carpenters, let's say 10 carpenters, and nine of them spend all their time making just the legs of those tables. Now legs are very important. You can't have a table without four legs for each of them. So at the end of a number of weeks, you have multitudes of legs there. And supposing there's just one man making the table tops, we're going to have a tremendous disproportion of the number of legs to the number of table tops and very, very few completed tables. You may have hundreds of legs and perhaps three or four tables. So if you were employed now as a carpenter to go into that shop, what would you do? What would the Lord tell you to do? I think he'd tell you, forget about legs now, make some table tops so that we can have completed tables. This is a picture of what is happening in a lot of Christendom today. Many are being converted. Praise the Lord for that. Many are going into unreached areas with the gospel at great sacrifice. Many are laying down their lives for preaching the gospel. We respect them, appreciate them, and I believe their reward will be great. They have fulfilled their calling. But there are other parts of the body that need to carry on from there and complete the work. And that is the second half of the Great Commission, to make these converts into disciples and teach them to do every single thing that Jesus commanded. Is that something we can ignore? For example, Jesus said that no man can serve two masters. He said that in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew and chapter 6, and Matthew 6 and verse 24. No one can serve two masters. Those two masters are not God and Satan. Now I know that Satan is the master of many people, but that's not the one Jesus was referring to, because no Christian believes that he can serve God and Satan, and no one attempts to do that. Christian does not do that. But here the two masters mentioned in Matthew 6, 24 are God and mammon. Mammon means money, material wealth, material possessions, real estate, stocks and shares, houses, lands, cars, etc. And he said you cannot serve both of these. But there are many Christians who feel that they can serve God and material wealth. But Jesus said you have to have a radical attitude towards one or the other if you want to serve. He said you've got to hate one and love the other, or hold on to one and despise the other. Now how many Christians do you think have understood what it is to hold on to God and despise and hate money? And say, I want to use money as my servant, but I won't let it be my master. Would you say all those who've been converted through evangelism have come to that place? Or Jesus said about plucking out our eye, right eye, if it stumbles us in verse 29 and causes to lust after a woman. How many Christians do you think have even been taught that? How many preachers have lived that life before they're able to teach it? There you see how these tables are incomplete. The work of the Great Commission is incomplete. So that's why we're looking at this neglected part of the Great Commission. All that Jesus taught. So we were looking at the temptations where we read the first recorded words of coming out of Jesus mouth after his baptism and anointing with the Holy Spirit. We looked at his first words, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God's mouth. And the second word where he corrected a misquotation of the devil and balanced it with another reference in scripture in Matthew 4, 7 saying, it's also written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And today we want to look at the third word that Jesus spoke to Satan. When Satan asked him to bow down to him and said, as it were, you have come here to get all these kingdoms of the world back to God. Okay. He showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory in a moment of time. And he said, I'll give you all these. If you fall down and worship me in Luke's gospel, chapter four, in the parallel passage, Satan says, all these have been given to me. They are mine, but I'll give them to you. How did Satan get them? Adam handed it all over to Satan in the garden of Eden. God had given Adam authority to rule over everything on the earth. But the moment Adam bowed down to Satan and did what Satan told him to do, he handed over what God had given him to Satan. And ever since that day, Satan has had that. And Jesus says, and he told Satan, I'll give this. Satan told Jesus, I'll give this to you. If you will bow down and worship me. That's what he has always wanted, Satan. That's what made him the devil. When he was the head of the angels, created by God, beautiful, full of wisdom, the highest position in the universe, long before man was created. You read the history of this highest angel in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. We don't know his name. He's only called the morning star in Isaiah 14, which is translated as Lucifer in Latin or some language. And so that name has stuck to him, but that's not his name. We don't know his name, but this head of the angels, he wanted the angels not to worship God, but to worship him. That's what he says in Isaiah 14. I will make myself like God. Remember this, that this is how sin originated. When someone wanted worship, when someone wanted to rebel against God, when someone's heart was lifted up with pride and wanted the angels to admire him. This is the origin of sins. The first sin in the world was not murder or adultery. It was the desire to get other people to admire you. And if you have that, whoever you are, even if you call yourself a Christian or a preacher, you want people to admire you and not Christ. You are walking in the way that Satan walked. It's a dangerous path because it finally leads to hell. And that's what we see here. He couldn't get it then. He was cast out from heaven, but now he tries to get it again. Fall down, verse nine, and worship me. And Jesus said, be gone, Satan, Matthew 4.10. For it is written, you shall worship the Lord, your God, and serve him only. There's only one person we must worship. We can make the mistake of worshiping glorious beings and great servants of God. We read in the book of Revelation that even the great apostle John made this mistake. He saw this angel and he fell down to worship him. And Revelation 22 and verse eight, he says, when he saw these wonderful things that were revealed in the book of Revelation, he says, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel. Imagine the apostle John, 95 years of age, having known the Lord for so long, could make this mistake of admiring this mighty servant of God. Any of us can make that mistake of admiring some mighty servant of God to the point where our contact with God himself becomes through that servant. Wherever a preacher or a pastor seeks to be a second mediator between God and man, you've got to be careful. The Old Testament prophets were people who communicated God's will to man. But in the new covenant, there is only one mediator between God and man. That is the Lord Jesus Christ. You don't need a pastor or a preacher or any man of God to be a second mediator between Christ and you. You don't need Mary. You don't need anybody else. You can go directly to Jesus and through him to the Father. But we can make a mistake here. John made a mistake. But here you see the faithfulness of this mighty angel. He says, don't do that. Where are the preachers and pastors and Christian leaders who will not allow other Christians to be attached to them, who will push them off and say, don't get attached to me. Be connected to Christ. That is a true man of God whom you can follow without any fear. The one who refuses to allow you to be attached to him. The one who refuses to find God's will for you, but tells you God is your father. Go to him directly. He will show you his will as the new covenant promise in Hebrews 8 and verse 11 is, they shall not teach every man his brother saying, know the Lord, but all shall know me from the least. That means the one who's newly born again, a baby in Christ to the greatest, the mightiest servant of God. All can know him personally. So the angel says, don't worship me. I'm one of your brothers. I'm fellow servant and you need to worship God. So that's what Jesus said here. Also in Matthew four, 10, the Bible begins as it would. The new Testament begins as it were with this phrase, worship the Lord, your God alone and ends in revelation 22 verse nine. Also worship the Lord, your God alone. Don't worship the devil. Don't worship angels. Don't worship human beings. Don't worship any great messenger of God. The word angel can also be translated as messenger. You can fall down with a messenger of God. When he reveals mighty truths, you've got to be very careful. We must honor God's servants. Of course, we must respect and appreciate and express our appreciation to God's servants, but not worship them, not imagine that they are God, not give them the place that God alone should have in our hearts. We shouldn't give that place to our husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, material things, or God's servants or anybody. We must each have a direct connection with God. And that's what Jesus was saying here. Worship the Lord, your God, and serve him only. It speaks of an intimate connection that we have with God directly because in the new covenant, he has become our father. He's not a distant God like it was in the old Testament, where he could only speak to people through the prophets. And if you wanted to find God's will, there was no way to find it unless you went to the high priest and he used the Urim and Thummim, which is things that they had in those days to find God's will, or you went to the prophet who could hear God speak to him because God was outside of man those days. And that's why you hear in the Old Testament, you read about God speaking with an audible voice because he was outside of man. But now, after the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit's come inside. That's why we don't hear God's voice audibly on the outside now. We hear it from within us through the renewing of our mind by the Holy Spirit. We come to know the will of God. So, worship of God is something that brings us into a very intimate, close relationship with our Heavenly Father. And worship is more than just speaking words or singing words to God. Let me clarify a misunderstanding. There are a lot of Christians, in fact, I would say more than 90% of believers have. There is a very common expression used in many churches today for their Sunday morning meeting, which is called a worship service. Or in Charismatic and other Pentecostal churches, they call it a time of praise and worship. Now, if you want to be completely scriptural and biblical, that is a totally wrong expression. That is not worship, what they are doing there on Sunday morning. You listen to the words of the songs they sing and everything, it is praise and thanksgiving. It's not worship at all. And if you don't believe me, you can take a concordance and look at the word worship as it is found throughout the New Testament. In the Old Testament, that was the only way they could express their worship to God, clapping and singing and using instruments, etc., to sing songs to God. But in the New Covenant, Jesus said to the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4 and verse 23 and 24, He said, The hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For such people, the Father seeks to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth, John 4, 24. So there we read Jesus spoke about an hour that was coming, that He was referring to the day of Pentecost. It hadn't yet come. But then He also said in John 4, 23, Now is, which means it was already fulfilled in Him because Jesus is the firstborn of many brothers in the New Covenant. He was the one who opened up the New Covenant for us. So in a sense, He was the first, the leader. And so that hour had come where there was one man finally walking on the earth who was worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth, and that was Jesus himself. Nobody ever had done it before. Man is spirit, soul, and body. 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23 tells us that. And this indicates when Jesus uses the word spirit here, He was saying that all Old Testament worship up until that point was only in the body and the soul. That means they worship God with their hands, raising their hands, clapping their hands. They worship God with their soul, which is using their mind, their intellect, their emotions. They felt joy and feelings, emotional feelings. It's like you have when you sing songs of praise and thanksgiving in the meeting. That was worship in the soul and body. But He said, Now you'll come to a deeper level of worship that you can have from now on when the Holy Spirit dwells in you like He's dwelling in me, Jesus said. You will also be able to worship in spirit and in truth, not just in body and soul. So what do we do today? We still clap our hands and raise our hands. We still feel emotional and use our intellect when we praise God. But beyond all that, we worship in the spirit. And that means that we penetrate that veil between soul and spirit and enter into that realm where we're alone with God. In the Old Testament tabernacle, they had three parts corresponding to body, soul and spirit. And the last part, the closed part covered by the veil was the most holy place where only God dwelt. The outer court, they had a lot of excitement with sacrifices being offered in the holy place. Also, number of priests were jostling around each other, offering incense and lighting the lamps, etc. But in the most holy place, it was God alone. So when a person entered in the most holy place, he was with God alone. He was not conscious of anybody else. There was nobody else there but Him and God. That is worship in the spirit, where it's you and God alone. And that's something you can do in your room. And it's not something that you do merely with words. One of the finest examples of what a true worshiper says or his attitude towards God is seen in Psalm 73 and verse 25. If you can say this honestly to God from the depth of your heart, you are a worshiper. If not, you are not worshiping in spirit. Psalm 73, verse 25 says, O God, whom have I in heaven but Thee? In other words, when I get to heaven, God, I'm not looking for the golden streets. I'm not looking for a mansion. I'm not looking for a crown. I'm going to be happy and satisfied with You alone. I don't need anybody else. I don't need anything else but You. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? I have wonderful brothers and sisters and family members who may be there in heaven, but You are going to be everything for me. And besides Thee, I desire nothing on earth, not only in heaven. Before I get to heaven, here on this earth, I don't desire anything but You. I don't desire anything more of material goods than what You've given me. I'm perfectly content. Godliness with contentment is great gain. A worshiper never has a complaint about anything on this earth. He's perfectly content with all the circumstances that God has arranged for him. He's content with the family God has brought him into, the job he has, everything he has. He's perfectly content. He desires nothing but God. Like the old saying goes, if a time comes in your life where you have nothing but God and everything else is lost, you'll find that God is more than enough. So this is true worship, where here on this earth, I desire nothing but God. I desire nothing on earth but You, Lord. And that is an attitude of heart. And if you don't have that attitude of heart, no matter how emotional you feel when you praise and thank God on Sunday mornings, you're not a worshiper. You can call it worship and praise, but you're deluding yourself. And Satan's quite happy for you to delude yourself like that because you imagine that you're worshiping God when you're not. But the Father desires, it says in, Jesus said that in John 4 23, the Father is seeking for those who will worship Him in spirit. What a longing the Father has. Do you have that longing to satisfy your Father's heart to be a worshiper in spirit? Then go to Psalm 73 25 and don't rest until those words are the expression of your heart, that you desire nothing on earth but Jesus Christ. Nothing, not even a ministry. Don't find your satisfaction in your evangelism or in your teaching or in your church building or in any ministry or in your money or your property or anything. Lord, I have You and I desire only You. Will such a man be a lazy man? Far from it. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, it's Matthew 4 10, and serve Him. Worship leads on to service, but it'll be much more effective service. The apostles worshipped and served. Jesus worshipped and served. And when you worship, it will lead to service which will be far more effective than just serving. You see, in our communion with God, we can say there are four steps. First of all is prayer, asking God for things. Second is thanksgiving, thanking God for what He's done for us, what He's given us. We go one step higher, praise. Prayer, thanksgiving, praise. Praise is expressing our appreciation to God, adoring Him for who He is, not for what He's done. Thanksgiving is for what He's done. Praise is for who He is. And then we go to the highest level, which is worship. And worship may be expressed in words, like we just said, Whom have I in heaven but Thee, Lord, Father. There's nothing on earth I desire beside You, Lord Jesus. Words. It could be expressed in song, where we express to God, all that I have is Yours, Lord. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold. Take my voice and let me sing always, only for my King, expressing my worship to God in song. And the highest expression of worship is silence, where I'm so taken up with the glory of God that I cannot even open my mouth. Very, very few believers come to that point, where they are, you know, blinded by the light of God in their hearts, not in their eyes, but in their hearts, like Isaiah, which makes them cry out, O Lord, I'm a sinful man, like Paul cried out, O wretched man that I am, I am the chiefest of sinners. That is the expression of a true worshiper, who has seen the glory of God, and very, very few believers come there, and the devil doesn't want you to go there. He wants you to worship him. Do you know that when you seek for something in the world, some gain in the world, you actually have to worship the devil in order to get it. But if you seek the glory of God, the kingdom of God, God will add to you, as it says in Matthew 6, 33, whatever you need to get. Otherwise, we can long to get so many things, which God doesn't want us to have, and pray for them, and ask for them, and we may think we got it, and that God has blessed us, and some of those material things can be a curse to us and our children. Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world, in Matthew 18 and verse 36. Otherwise, my servants would fight. He doesn't fight for earthly things, and we don't pray for these things. We believe that if we seek God's kingdom first, and are worshippers of God, our Father, He will add to us whatever we need on this earth. We don't go to the devil to get things. Very often, when people saying, Lord, give me this, give me that, give me the other material thing, just proving that they're not content with what they have. But as Paul said in Philippians 4, I have learned, verse 11, to be content with what I have, whether God gives me little, or gives me much. Only a worshipper can say that. He seeks God's kingdom, and God determines how much of this earth we should have, which will not destroy us. It's better God decides that. Too much of things of earth can destroy us, if you're not careful. So, we need to come before God, and say, Lord, you please guide us in this matter, so that we can worship you, and never stop worshipping you, and never be distracted by mammon, and the attractions of mammon. So, remember this, that when we seek for something of this world, and its glory, the honor of men, very often, we'll end up worshipping the devil. Because the devil said to Jesus, fall down and worship me. I'll give you the things of this world, and its glory. So, don't seek the glory and honor of this world, lest you end up worshipping Satan. Seek the glory and honor of God alone. Not your name, but God's name. He taught us to pray, hallowed be your name first. That's the way of salvation, from worshipping Satan. Unconsciously, many believers are worshipping Satan. We need to worship God. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, help us to be discerning in these days of great deception. That we shall really reverence you, and worship you in spirit, and give to you that worship of our hearts. By saying to you, we desire nothing and no one on this earth, but you. We're satisfied with you. We're satisfied with exactly what you give us, of earthly things that we need. We don't need any more. We're content with what we have, and we want you more and more. In Jesus' name, amen.