Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Intro: Nothing is worse than when your body is not at its fullest health.
One little detail can throw off everything.
(Broken Toe)
When you think about it, our spiritual health should be of great concern to us.
It can affect a lot when we are not healthy in our faith.
Did you know we exist to bring glory to God? Yes sir, true story.
One of the ways we do this is by making disciples.
What I want to talk about today is discipleship and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
I think there's some confusion, so let me define what it means to be a disciple.
"Discipleship is the process of devoting oneself to a teacher to learn from and become more like them."
For Christians, discipleship can only take place in community.
There is no discipleship with you off by yourself.
That's not how this works.
This is the process of learning the teachings of Jesus.
This is the process of following the examples of Jesus in obedience through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Discipleship not only involves the process of becoming a disciple but of making other disciples through teaching and evangelism.
Here is why I am leaning into this conversation today.
I think it’s very important for one, and there seems to be a misunderstanding of what it means to believe in Jesus.
Somewhere in the last few years the idea that seems to be playing out, and believed, is you can believe in Jesus but not follow him.
A lot of people are able to say, "I believe in Jesus."
What they're saying is they believe in some historic facts.
They believe in Jesus like you would believe in Abraham Lincoln.
"I know he was a man.
It seems like he did some good things.
I kind of like what he has brought about."
But to believe in Jesus is not like believing in Abraham Lincoln.
To believe in Jesus requires we follow Jesus, or we do not believe.
To say you believe in Jesus but do not follow him empties belief of its meaning.
You cannot say, "Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who has come to take away the sins of the world and to reconcile us and all that’s broken in the world to the Father, however…”
See, that is where the problem is friends, right there.
“However, even though I believe those things, I have no intention of surrendering to or following him.
I just believe he was."
Your declaration of Jesus and lack in following Him reveals you actually don't believe He is who He says He is.
Your lack of following Him reveals your lack of belief.
To be a disciple of Jesus Christ does not mean we just believe some things intellectually, but that we've surrendered our lives over to His lordship, and we are following after Him.
Anything less than that is not biblical Christianity; it is something of your imagination.
In fact, the early church was just known as the Way.
It was Acts 11 that they're first called Christians.
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What do they mean by the Way?
Well, they lived the way of Jesus.
That's what they did.
They lived life like Jesus would have them live life.
To be a disciple of Jesus, who is learning the way of Jesus and following in obedience, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is to have charged to you the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
There is no swagger in the kingdom.
You have no boast but the cross of Christ.
That's it!
Literally, you have nothing to brag about, point to, celebrate, or pat yourself on the back about.
This is hard for us.
It's hard for me!
It's hard for us to believe what gives us access to our heavenly Father is just the free gift of God's grace extended to us.
Yet there is no one following Jesus, believing in Jesus, who does not lean on and live by this given righteousness.
Again, a disciple is in the process of learning the teachings of Jesus in the Scripture and following after his example in obedience to the power of the Holy Spirit.
My guess is many of us kind of heard the good news, grabbed onto it, and started just saying yes and following after Jesus.
If we're really, really honest, a lot of times what Jesus asks of us is easy to give.
Then there are those times where it's not as easy at all, right?
Most of us have these little areas.
We're just like, "Umm, Jesus, You can have everything.
Just don't touch this."
What happens is we have this relationship, this fear, or this anxiety, and we don't want to lay it down.
We want to control it, manage it, and hold it on to ourselves.
So Jesus knows this will be our experience.
He tells this parable in Matthew 13 to kind of help us pay attention to the dangers that can befall us as we follow Him.
Let’s dive into this text.
Read: Matthew 13:1-9
Now what happens next in this parable is super encouraging to me.
He tells this parable to the crowd and says, "He who has ears, let him hear."
Then what happens is his disciples come up to him and go, "We don't know what you're talking about.
We don't.
I don't know how you're expecting them to understand because, man, we're with you 24/7, Boss, and we don't know what you're talking about."
What's encouraging is, without just laying in to his disciples, Jesus then explains the parable.
Look at what He says.
Read: Matthew 13:18-23
You have in this parable four types of soil.
The first hears the Word but does not understand it.
I think what's happening in this part of this text is this category for people who are just not spiritually open.
They're not interested in spiritual conversations.
Our role in that place is to simply pray God would soften the ground, pray God would give them understanding.
We don't write people off.
We pray God would create a sensitivity.
Then what we see happen in the second soil is where, as followers of Jesus, I think we just need to be aware this is a possibility.
The first illustration he uses this idea of someone who hears the Word and receives it with joy.
Then the sun comes out, scorches it, and kills it.
The first danger as followers of Jesus Christ, as disciples, is having no real root.
That gets exposed in persecution and tribulation.
Now whether we're taught it or not, there is in almost every one of us this insidious prosperity gospel belief that we have lived in such a way that we deserve the blessings of God.
If anything, Christians should never be surprised by tribulation and difficulty.
The Bible is full of it!
Who gets out without bleeding, without loss, without mourning, without hurting?
Who?
You guys want to just walk through the Bible?
Moses?
Jeremiah?
Paul?
Joseph?
Jesus?
Nope.
We live in a broken world.
Tribulation, persecution, should never surprise us.
I don't know where we're getting the idea that giving your life to Jesus Christ means a life of ease without suffering.
It's certainly not our Bible.
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