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 alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.  Matthew 28:19-20

Baptists know how to spell the first word in verse 19 of chapter 28, but we have forgotten how God spells ‘Go.’
    The word ‘teach’ is in these verses twice. The first time, the word ‘teach’ is ‘matheteuo’, and it means to enlist or to evangelize or to enroll or to make a person a disciple. Go ye therefore and teach — Go and make disciples, go and bring men to Christ —  that’s the evangelization that God has instructed us, as a people, to do. 
    The word ‘teach’ in verse 20, however, is the word ‘didasko’ in the Greek language, and it means to instruct or to educate people. 
    And so, when Jesus says, Go, He is giving us the compelling word that we are to go into all of the world. By the way, that word ‘go’ really should be interpreted ‘as you are going into your world.’ So, wherever you are going is that piece of real estate that you find between your two feet at any given time, whether it be in the restaurant or whether it be on your job or wherever you are. Wherever you are going, or as you are going, you are to make disciples for the Lord Jesus. And then, when we have won them, we are to teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. One of the greatest responsibilities of the church world is to train their members to observe the things that Jesus has taught us in the Word of God. 
    It is one thing to preach about long hair and short skirts and bobbed hair and earrings. We preach about everything. But that doesn’t do much good when you’re trying to teach somebody what Jesus says in the Word of God of how your life will reflect the essence of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the reason we have Sunday School. The Sunday School is the reaching and teaching arm of the church. And every Pastor is to be a pastor-teacher, instructing his people in the things of the Lord.
    Every week, more than one million people are dying and going to hell. Don’t you think we ought to be busy about doing what Jesus told us, if we’re seeing people go to hell?
    One of my friends, some years ago, was on his way to Charlotte, North Carolina to preach on a Sunday morning. As he drove through and outside of the city of Monroe, he saw a house burning, the smoke billowing out of the top of the house. He had an appointment. He was to be at church and preach. But, as he drove by that house, he realized, “I wonder if there’s anybody in there.” And so he stopped, backed up, pulled into the yard, got out, went up, rang the bell, beat on the door and kept beating on the door, and finally a man opened the door and said, “What do you want?” He said, “Man, your house is on fire!” Well, he began to cry and call out, got his wife who was still asleep, got his little children, who were asleep in that burning house. Had not that preacher decided that people were more important than an appointment, all of those people probably would have died in that burning house. Don’t you think that we ought to be busy warning people of the judgment to come and get them to the Lord Jesus? 
    Another one of my friends lived in the state of Louisiana. There is a bridge that crosses Lake Ponchatrain. It’s the longest bridge in the world. One night, a barge broke loose and was drifting in the wind and hit a section of that bridge and knocked it out, and so there was just a gap in the bridge. Cars coming along, not knowing that the bridge was out, would drive right off into the water. Numbers of people were drowned in the cold waters of that lake, because they did not know. It was foggy. My preacher friend was coming along, and he was watching the taillights of the car in front of him, and suddenly they just disappeared. He said, “What in the world?” He put on his brakes and stopped right at the edge of the opening in that bridge. Seeing what had happened, what could he do? He could not jump into the water. But he turned around, and he saw headlights coming through the fog, through the night, toward him. He had a broom in the back of his car. He grabbed that broom and started running toward those headlights, sweeping that broom through the air, hollering, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” People thought he was crazy. The first car stopped, rolled down the window and said, “Man, what’s wrong?” He said, “The bridge is out. You must stop. We must stop all of the other traffic that’s coming, lest they will drive into that place and die as well.” 
    Don’t you think, if we know that there is danger ahead, that there are people who are living around us, who sleep in the same bed, perhaps, that we sleep in, or who eat across the table from where we eat every day, or who work beside us at our job, or who go to school where we go to school — Don’t you think that we ought to be as faithful as that preacher was to run toward those and warn them, “There is judgment coming, and you need to turn, lest you miss God and go to an eternity without hope, without God.” 
    Jesus knew, at the close of His ministry, just before being caught up into heaven, and He said, Go ye  into all of the world. 
    We are told that 40% to 70% of the population of any community in America is un-churched. In the area where I reside, Horry County, we are told that 70% has no relationship with the church. It’s high time that we awoke.
    I served the North American Mission Board as a trustee for eight years. We commissioned a study, released in 2000, which said that, by the year 2020, 50% of the churches in America will close their doors. Half — one out of every two churches in America — are going to close their doors. We’re already eight years into that 20-year cycle. It’s happening all around us. Most of us have not caught up on that. I believe this is the reason that Jesus told us to go. But I’m afraid that we have forgotten how God spells ‘Go.’ If your church is not into the program of going, your church is on the list of candidates for closing. If you’re not winning people to the Lord, if you’re not growing, you are either plateaued or dying. It’s that simple.
    I am convinced that any church ought to grow.
    I did a revival meeting at a church in northern Greenville County years ago. One of my friends, with whom I was a student at North Greenville College, had become its pastor, and I went there to help him and his people in a revival meeting. The prior pastor had been to the Director of Evangelism for the state of South Carolina and had said, “There is nobody in my community that’s lost.” He said, “I have canvassed every house in my region, and there is nobody out here that’s lost. We’re not baptizing anybody because there is nobody out here that’s lost.” I went there to be with Eddie and preach in an area where there’s nobody lost. But he baptized 18 that week into his church. There were people all through that region who were lost and begging for somebody to come and tell them about the Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve got news for you, dear friend. You cannot get the lost people to come into your church by just putting a sign out at the road saying the church meets here. Friends, if you’re going to get them, you’ll get them because you go after them.
    I pastored in Greer, for six years, the fastest growing church in the state of South Carolina. That church grew to be a powerful and large church. We were swelled beyond our capability of taking care of the folks while I was there. We had more than 100 in children’s church, because, basically, we didn’t have room for them anywhere else. But we started a children’s church ministry with more than 100 and my young preachers and others took care of those children every week while I preached to the adults in the auditorium, and it was wall to wall, full of people who were hungry to hear the Word of God. Do you know how it happened? We had 151 additions the first six months I was pastor of that church. But the reason was I wore out my shoes and wore off my knuckles beating on the doors of people’s homes, asking them if they would like to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. I’m serious. And the only way that we’re ever going to get the job done is we’ve got to get back to the basics and start doing again those things that the Lord said. Go ye, go ye, go. How does God spell Go? 
    Most Baptists think that God spells Go ‘a-t-t-e-n-d’, because, if we go to church, we have, we think, fulfilled our obligation. We come and we sit and we soak and we sour. But just going to church does not make you a disciple, and it certainly does not fulfill what Jesus said when He said, Go. 
    When I was in my first church, I heard about these big churches that had something going on all of the time. We were just a little church out in the country, and we had service on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night and couldn’t get many there sometimes even at that. But do you know what? I heard about those churches, and I said, “I hope the day will come when there is something going on every day, seven days a week, at my church.” And I lived to see that come to pass. Any day you went by the church I pastored there in Conway, the lights were on, we had services of some kind, something going on every day of the week, from early morning until late into the night all of the time.
    But God does not spell Go “a-t-t-e-n-d”, as much as we have going on at Baptist churches. 
    Some think that it’s spelled “g-i-v-e.” I believe that every person who is a part of the family of God ought to tithe. I believe that every member of a Baptist church ought to be a tither. That means giving a minimum of 10% of your income to the work of the Lord God. And, if you’re not doing that, you are robbing yourself of the spiritual blessings that God has in store for you. You’re robbing yourself of the prosperity that God intends for His children to have. He said, Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. I can’t understand that. Mathematically, you can’t do as much with 90% as you can with 100%. But my wife and I have tried God, and we have found that, when we gave 10% to God, our 90% went further than our 100%. He said, Try me and see if I will not pour out upon you blessings that you will not have room to receive them. Tithing is just where you start, and then you give offerings of love and grace. Because God has given to you, you give back to him, and you want to do more and more for the Lord Jesus.
    It is not spelled “t-e-a-c-h.” If you are gifted to teach, then you are a student of the Word of God. If you do not like to study, you are not qualified to be a teacher. One of the saddest things is for people to go into a Sunday School class where the teacher has not prepared and comes in with some kind of a quarterly and reads what the rest have in their hand and could have read without them. If you want to kill a Sunday School class, that’s one of the best ways I know to do it. You must be a student. Study. Come into that class. Have your quarterly in your hand. But open your Bible, so that the class will know you’re teaching from the Word of God, and say, “As I studied my lesson this week, God said to me –” and you’re able to teach them, then, from the Word of God. And a teacher who will stand before his or her class, week after week, and not personally witness to the members of that class is not qualified to be a teacher. 
    Dr. Percy Ray, one of the greatest preachers, in my opinion, who has ever lived in this land, told me that, in his first pastorate, he took a little church that had been a quarter-time church, and then it started growing, and people were getting saved every week. In that church, there was a schoolteacher who took offense at the way Percy talked and the way he just slayed the King’s English. She came to him one Sunday after the sermon and said, “I want you to know that you offended me today, by the grammatical errors that you made in your speaking. You made 37 errors in your speaking today.” He said, ‘I did?’ She said, “Yes, sir, I wrote down every one of them—37 of them.” He said, ‘I can’t believe that. I thought it would have been a whole lot more than that.’ She said, “You offended me with that.” He said, ‘Ma’am, what do you do in this church?’ She said, “I teach high school boys.” ‘How long have you been doing that?’ She said, “I’ve been teaching them for 19 years.” He said, ‘In 19 years of teaching high school boys, how many of them have you won to Jesus Christ?’ “Well, none.” He said, ‘I’ve only been here six months, and I’ve already won 69 people and brought them into the church and baptized them. And you haven’t won anybody in 19 years. Now which of us is doing the work of God? But, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make a deal with you. If you will agree that you’ll go home today and draw a circle around your house of one mile and write down the names of everybody who lives within that circle who is not saved, and you will start praying for them, and you’ll pray for them every day, I’ll work hard on trying to improve my English.’ She said, “I’ll do it, preacher.” The next Sunday, when he finished his sermon, she came to him and said, “Preacher, you did better today. You didn’t make but 27 errors.” He said, ‘Thank you, ma’am, I’m working hard at trying to improve.’ Three Sundays went by. When he finished his sermon, that woman stepped out into the aisle to come to the altar at the invitation, and, coming with her, were 13 boys who were in her class that she had won to Jesus that week. Isn’t that good? Bless God, there’s a teacher who came to understand what teachers are supposed to do as they go out and witness.
    Years ago, a teacher in the youth division of our church came weeping at the invitation and said, “Preacher, I’ve got a little girl in my class who is not a Christian. I’ve reached all of the others, but I’ve got one little girl I’ve not been able to reach. Will you pray with me that, before the school year ends, I can bring her to know Jesus?” Well, of course I covenanted to pray with her, and, just within a couple of weeks, she came down the aisle again, that little girl holding her hand, and, when she got there, she said, “Preacher, she got saved in the Sunday School class this morning.” 
    The last one. Now, that’s what teachers ought to do, more than anything else—bring their students to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. It is not spelled t-e-a-c-h.
    It is also not spelled “s-i-n-g.” I love music. I am stirred by music. I sang from the time I was a child. My mother, who did not know music, would sit me on her lap and she taught me to sing the songs of the church. I sang. I directed music in my church when I was just a teenager. I served as the Minister of Music of the First Baptist Church at Pelham when I was a student at North Greenville. I sang in quartet music, and we went about from place to place. I love music. But I want you to know that just singing and being able to sing like a songbird will never, never fulfill the commission that Jesus gave when He said go unto all the world.
    And, also, it is not spelled “d-e-a-c-o-n.” Some deacons feel that they have been called of God to run the preacher. They’ll run him ragged, if they can, and run him off, if they can’t. May I say to you that the role of the deacon is a supportive role. It is not to try and run the church or the pastor. When a deacon and a pastor understand their role, they become partners in the work that God has given the church to accomplish. 
    I thank God I served with some of the best men who were deacons and yokefellows. Every deacon had a yokefellow who worked alongside of him in my last church, and those sweet laymen would often times beat me to the home where there had been a death or a sickness, or they would beat me to the mortuary and caring for the family as they were responsible for them. And the work of the church increased, and we were able to do much more than we could have, had not my deacons been trained and willing to become involved. Can I tell you about the deacons at my church? I had a list. We published it every year before we elected deacons. A deacon, in order to qualify, had to be saved. They had to be faithful to all of the services of the church. They had to be a tither. They had to not be a gossiper or their wives. They had to agree to support the programs of the church and the pastor. They had to come to Thursday night outreach visitation. They had to come for 8:00 prayer meeting on Sunday morning. Some folks said, “You’ll never get any deacons with those kinds of requirements.” They stood in line, waiting to be asked to serve and do the work of the church. And when deacons understand that, they become part of a team that God puts together to shake their world for the Lord Jesus. But just being a deacon does not fulfill the commission to go.
    How do you spell go? 
    It’s easy. If you’re sitting at a red light, you stop, because you know you’re supposed to, and you sit there with anticipation. You’re watching that light all of the time. And, just as soon as the light changes, something in your head tells your foot to put the pedal to the metal. And you proceed through the light. Every time you see somebody that you don’t know, you ought to have it in your heart to talk to that person about Jesus. You ought to be ready to go. When the pastor says, “We’re having visitation,” all of you ought to say, ‘I want to be a part of that, and I’m going to help you, pastor.’ And, if you don’t know how to share your faith, your pastor will train you to do that, and he’ll put you with somebody who already knows, so that you’ll not be uncomfortable, and you can learn how to share your faith. 
    A policeman told me that he was sitting in a line of traffic, waiting for the light to change. A woman was in the first car at the light. As she sat there, she was multi-tasking. That means that she was checking her hair in the mirror, she was talking on the telephone, and she had some papers in the seat beside of her that she was shuffling through. She sat there, and the light changed, and she didn’t go. And, before she could get going, the light changed again, so that, when the people behind her starting honking, she looked up, the light was red and she didn’t understand why they were blowing their horn. And they continued to blow their horn. She became animated. She started using ‘sign language’ to communicate. She rolled the window down, put her head out and began to curse the people behind her, because they were blowing at her. Just then, the light changed, she put the accelerator down, shot through the intersection. The policeman who was sitting back there, saw her, pulled her over, got her out of the car, put her hands up on top of the thing and checked her out and then put handcuffs on her and took her to jail, put her in a holding cell. 
    An hour later, he came back and got her out. He said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry I arrested you and brought you in.” She said, ‘You ought to be. I wasn’t guilty of a thing. I didn’t run that red light. I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t doing anything that was out of the way.’ He said, “I know that, but, ma’am, I saw the bumper sticker on your car that said ‘Meet me in Sunday School next Sunday’ and, hearing your language and seeing your gestures, I just knew that had to be a stolen car, for a Christian wouldn’t talk that way.”
    Go. God said Go. In Matthew 21:28-31, Jesus told about two sons told to go into the field. One said, “I’m not going to do it.” The other son said, ‘I will,’ but he didn’t. Later, the first son repented, and he went. Which one of the two, Jesus said, fulfilled the command of the father? And, if Jesus is commanding all of us to go, don’t you think we ought to do what He told us to do? Absolutely. We ought to be going into all of the world. Some people say, “I can’t do that. I don’t know how to do that.” You can do something to get people to Jesus. 
    A fellow lived in Dallas, Texas. He was shy. He didn’t know what to do. But his pastor preached and read from the Word of God that we are to go. So, he went to the church office and got a bundle of tracts. Every day, he would go out to the Dallas airport and into the men’s room. He would take tracts and walk along and look for feet underneath those doors and say, “Here, read this. Here, read this. Here, read this.” He would do that, hour after hour. Don’t you think you could do something?
    There is a man in the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida who is illiterate. That means he can’t read or write. But he heard his pastor preach that everybody ought to go. He got a tract that his pastor had written on how to be saved. And he goes out, every day, and stands at the bus stop, and, as people come up, to wait for the bus, he says, “My pastor has written this, and I can’t read it. Would you read this to me?” And he just turns the page, and they read the plan of salvation. That man is the leading soul winner in his church. He can’t read or write, but he has a heart for God, and he shares his faith with others. If we would get that excited, do you reckon we would make a difference? Do you reckon, if we got as excited about what Jesus said, as we are about ballgames and some other things, that we would absolutely change our city for the glory of God?
    There are some men who learned how to spell ‘Go’. 
    Jonah learned it. He tried not to. But, when Jonah learned it, he turned a city of hundreds of thousands to the Lord. Elisha learned how to spell ‘Go.’ When the Lord told him that he should leave his oxen and go, he turned a nation to God. Paul learned how to spell ‘Go’, and he turned the world upside down, they accused him. He turned the known world to God. Phillip, a deacon, was leading in a revival north of Jerusalem, and it had been going on for a long time, a lot of people were getting saved, when the spirit said to Phillip, Leave here and go down into the desert; there is one man. You know, one man is important to God. And he sent him to do the work, and he won the Ethiopian eunuch to the Lord. That didn’t impress me a whole lot for a long time. But, then, I started studying church history, and I found out that he shared his faith, and the faith that he shared soon swept across all of northern Africa, because one man heard the voice of God and obeyed.
    Go is not in the future tense. Go is not in the past tense. It’s in the present tense. Go is not in the passive voice. It is in the active voice. It isn’t in the neuter gender, but it is both masculine and feminine. When God says Go, He is pointing His finger at you as much as He is pointing it at me, and we are to go into all of the world. 
    Do you believe that? Do you believe that, what Jesus said we are to go, we all ought to be going? I want you to think of someone you know, someone you love who is lost and unprepared for eternity. Can you see their face? Your husband? Your wife? Your son? Your daughter? Your brother? Your sister? Your uncle? Your aunt? Your cousin? Your best friend? The person you work beside. Those you go to school with? The neighbor who lives just down the street? You love them, and you know they’re lost and going to hell. Put into your mind now that you’re standing before God with them. God says that, in that day of judgment, when men are cast into hell, He will require their blood at your hand. There are your loved ones, your neighbors, your friends  — falling into hell.  Look at your hands. Are they bloody, because you failed to tell them about Jesus?
    Paul said, “I would be willing to give up my place in heaven and go to hell if it means that my brothers would be saved.” The rich man in hell said, “If I can’t get any relief, please send somebody, send Lazarus back, that he might warn my brothers.” Dead men don’t come back to witness. He said, “They have Moses and the prophets. They have the scriptures.” Brothers and sisters, the world around us has you and me. And, if everybody won souls at the same rate you win souls, would you have ever been saved? For you’re saved because somebody loved you enough to share the Gospel. And, now, God is looking to you and me. Would you, like Paul, say, “God, wait a minute. I’m sorry I didn’t tell them. If you’ll give me one more chance, God, I’ll do that.” Too late. Too late then. If you would weep over them then, don’t you think you ought to weep over them now? If you would want to witness to them then, don’t you think you ought to witness to them now? If you would plead for God to let them into heaven then, don’t you think we ought to plead with them now, so that they will be admitted into the kingdom of God? Go ye therefore and evangelize, witness, win people to the Lord Jesus Christ.
    I found, in John Wesley’s notes, his 12 rules. I wrote this down, and I have kept this on my desk every day since 1986. It so inspired me. Maybe, it will you, too. He said, “You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore, spend and be spent in this work. It is not your business to preach so many times, but to save as many souls as you can, to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and, with all of your power, to build them up in that holiness, without which they cannot see the Lord.” And that became a driving force in this preacher’s life, as I began to seek to win my world for Jesus. 
    While pastoring in Greer, one of my people came and said, “Preacher, will you pray for mama? She’s in the hospital. She’s dying. She’s 73. She’s in a coma. Will you pray?” I said, ‘Of course, I will. What hospital?’ She told me, and, the next day, I went to that hospital room. Her daughter was there. I visited. I prayed over that woman who was in a coma. I visited the next day. I visited the next day. I asked God to let her come around, so that I could tell her about Jesus. Sure enough, she came out of that coma. And she got saved, at age 73. I baptized her into the fellowship of our church. That daughter’s concern is what took me there to share my faith. Here is what her mama told me. She said, “Preacher, I don’t know exactly what was going on, but it was like I was standing on the edge of a high cliff, and, down below me, there was a burning lake of fire, and I felt myself teetering, just about to fall, when I felt something grab hold of my dress tail and pull me back, and I regained my stance. I was still standing there, and I looked down at the flames. In a little while, I started to fall again, and I felt something get hold of my apron strings and pull me back. And again I was falling. And I felt myself falling into the flames, when something caught hold of me and pulled me back. Three times, that happened. Now, I know what it was. It was my daughter and you praying for me, that I would not die without God and I would be saved.” 
    You are the only thing standing between someone and hell. Are you going to do like Bob did and run across that bridge and wave your arms and holler, “Stop! Stop! There is death ahead. Stop!” Can you see the face of that loved one now? Can you hear their cries that would come from hell if they died without God? Are you willing to weep over them? And then to seek to get them into the house of God and win them for Jesus. It will change your life. It will save theirs. And it will change our world if we’ll do it for God’s glory and His honor.
    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 alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
    Let’s get busy and get about the work of God.