Force Multiplier: All Authority Before Any Assignment

 No More Delay: What Are You Waiting For | Day 4A

"Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'" Matthew 28:18-20, NIV

A warm good morning to you. There is a term used in the military for what you reach for when the assignment in front of you is far larger than the people and equipment you have been given. A force multiplier is anything that makes a small force count for far more than its size. You do not receive more soldiers. You receive something that changes what the soldiers already there are able to do. The church has worked under exactly those conditions from its first morning, and the story of what Jesus placed in the hands of a badly outnumbered group of people is worth enough of our attention that we are spending two mornings on it rather than rushing through in one. This is the first half. The second half, and the rest of what that multiplier makes possible, comes next.

All Authority Before Any Assignment

The arithmetic on that hillside in Galilee was not close. Eleven men remained, most of them fishermen and tradesmen. The assignment handed to them was every nation on earth. "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'" (Matthew 28:18-20, NIV).

The order of that sentence is the whole comfort of it. Jesus does not open with what they must accomplish. He opens with what he already holds. All authority. Not most of it, not authority pending the outcome of their efforts, and not authority that grows if they perform well. It was given to him at his resurrection, complete, and only then does the word therefore arrive. The going was never the foundation. It was the consequence of an authority that had already settled everything.

What the Commission Actually Puts in Our Hands

Notice what Jesus names as the method for the going. Not persuasion, not talent, not a strategy built by clever people for reaching cities. Baptizing and teaching. He attached the entire commission to water and to words, ordinary things that carry an authority far beyond what they appear to hold. That is worth sitting with for a moment, because it means the actual instrument of God is present whenever a called servant of the church lowers water over a baby on an ordinary weekend, and it is present whenever an ordinary believer speaks a plain sentence about what Christ has done. We are not supplying the power in either case. We are standing near it, letting it do in that room what it has always done, and trusting that our own qualifications were never the point Jesus was making when he handed this over.

That is exactly why the message itself is enough on its own, without a degree behind it or a stage under it. "Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ." (Romans 10:17, NIV). Faith does not arrive because the messenger was gifted or polished. It arrives through hearing, because the word about Christ carries its own weight and does its own work regardless of who is speaking it.

Jesus said as much to the same eleven in different words before he ascended. "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8, NIV). The multiplier is named there outright, and it is a Person. The disciples did not become more capable men that day. They received the Spirit, and the Spirit did through them what their own capability never could have reached.

It is worth naming honestly what we have done with all of this. We have quietly reclassified the mission as professional work, something belonging to pastors and mission boards, and we have treated our own kitchen tables, break rooms, and driveways as territory that somehow falls outside it. That has left people we love waiting on a conversation nobody was ever going to have with them. Christ has already carried that quiet reassignment to the cross and forgiven it completely, and he has not withdrawn a single thing he placed in our hands.

All of this rests on Jesus Christ, who holds the authority, who attached his commission to water and to words rather than to our own performance, and who promised to be with the eleven, and with us, to the very end of the age. That promise did not expire with them. He is the multiplier, and the smallest thing we carry into today is backed by everything he holds. But authority and means are only half of this story. Christ did not simply hand this to eleven men and walk away. He built something to keep it going long after they were gone, and that is exactly where we pick this up next time. Come back for the rest.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for holding all authority in heaven and on earth so that I never have to hold any of it myself. Thank you for attaching your commission to water and to words rather than to my own performance, and thank you for forgiving the many mornings I decided this mission belonged to someone more qualified while people I love waited.

Holy Spirit, you are the power in the word and in the water, and I have no other. Fill my ordinary sentences today, and give me the courage to speak them to the one person you have already placed near me. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

You are not undersupplied for whatever today holds. You are carrying something with all the authority of heaven behind it, and that has been true every morning you have ever gotten out of bed. Say the ordinary sentence. Trust the word to do what only it can do. And tomorrow, come back for the second half of this.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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