Learn

Turn to the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Before we get started I’ve got one more announcement. In two weeks, on November 19th we will be taking up a special offering for Stadia. Stadia is a church planting organization. Stadia is the organization that planted the church is Ashville. Ten years ago we helped that church physically when we had members go to Asheville once a month for several months to help with their childcare. We also helped financially by putting Stadia in our mission budget for the church’s first three years. That money went to help get the congregation off the ground.

Stadia wants to plant fifteen inner city churches next year and is asking if we will help by taking up a special offering. These churches will be planted in large cities where there are few churches and few resources. We can’t drive a quarter mile without passing a couple of churches, but that’s not the case in these larger cities. Perhaps it was like that once, but today most of those churches have moved to the suburbs leaving very little Christian witness in cities that are filled with poverty and crime. Stadia wants to help change that by planting fifteen churches next year and another fifteen the following year. Each new church will receive $15,000 to help train the new preacher for the work and to help the new congregation get started. These will be small churches meeting in storefronts, businesses, or homes. Last year there was even a church started in a prison.

Rodney has been incarcerated for fifteen years at the Hutchinson State Prison in CA for being an accomplice to a murder. His wife, Kelly, started attending a neighborhood church because their twelve-year-old son needed guidance without a man in the home. The men in the church hung out with Zeke, their son, investing time, love, and encouragement. Rodney saw the change in his son’s life and how his wife was heartened by the people of the neighborhood church. After giving his life to Christ in prison, Rodney being to be trained. As a result of his training, Rodney has started two closed circuit TV churches inside the prison walls and he disciples many of the other prisoners. Stadia has plans to start another church in a prison in Kansas.

We don’t live in the inner city and hopefully none of us will be prisoners so we won’t have an opportunity to start a church in a prison like Rodney has done, but we can help others to do that through our giving. In two weeks, on November 19th, we’ll be taking up a special offering to help with this church planting effort.

We are continuing our series titled Surprise the World. In this series, Surprise the World, we have seen that while we are not all called to start new churches, travel to a distant land as a missionary, or stand on a street corner with a bullhorn, we have all been called to tell others about Jesus. We may not have the gift of evangelism, but we all called to be evangelistic.

Just hearing those words makes most of us nervous. The thought of sharing our faith makes us nervous. Yet it’s clear throughout the New Testament that this is what we are supposed to be doing. However, the focus in the New Testament is less on what we are supposed to say and more on the life we are to be living. For example, Paul wrote to the Colossians saying:

2Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4:2-6)

I pointed out earlier in this series how Paul points to two prongs of evangelism. The first prong is that of the evangelist – in this case Paul – who goes out proclaiming the good news. The second prong is that of most believers as they live Christ-like lives that will cause people to ask questions. And when they ask, be prepared to give an answer. The focus of this series is to fulfill the mission of God with this second prong – living in such a way that will surprise others and make them ask questions?

We’ve been going over habits that we can incorporate into our lives that will help with this. We’ve talked about blessing people and I’ve encouraged you to find three people each week that you can bless: one Christian, one person you don’t think is a Christian, and then one more. We talked about eating with people and again I encouraged you to find three people each week that you can eat with: one Christian, one person you don’t think is a Christian, and then one more. Find someone that could use some fellowship and eat with them. Then last week we talked about listening to the leading of God’s Spirit as we live in this world balancing between engaging the world without being compromised by the world. We need God’s help with that.

Today we are moving on to the fourth habit – learning.

Turn with me to Matthew 11. As we talk about learning there are two types of learning that I want us to think about: learning about Jesus and learning from Jesus.

First, we need to learn about Jesus.

25At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. 27All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matthew 11:25-27)

In the prayer Jesus thanks God for those to whom God has revealed information about him. God had hidden information from some while revealing it to others. From whom had God hidden information about Jesus? He’d hidden it from the religious leaders. God had hidden it because they didn’t really want to know about Jesus anyway. The Pharisees, scribes, and scholars were ignoring Jesus at best and at worst were trying to get rid of him. It was the ordinary people like the tax collectors and sinners who were seeking Jesus out. And it was to those who sought for Jesus that God revealed Jesus.

In Matthew 16 Jesus asks the disciples who they thought he was. When Peter responded that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus responded by saying:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. (Matthew 16:17)

It was God that had revealed these things to Peter about Jesus. So in our passage Jesus thanks God for those who were hearing, understanding, and responding. Jesus says,

Thank you for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise and clever. Thank you for revealing the truth to the ordinary people.

How much do you know about Jesus? The truth is we all need to learn more about Jesus and the things he did while he was on earth. We already know some things. We know some stories about his birth, though we often get our traditions confused with the facts as given in the New Testament. How many magi came to see Jesus? Tradition says three, but the Bible doesn’t say. We know a few of the miracle Jesus performed and maybe even a couple of parables he told. And that’s the point; most Christians don’t really know a whole lot about their Savior they claim to love. We need to learn more about Jesus.

Why is this important? It’s important because the more we know about Jesus the better we’ll be able to talk about Jesus when people ask us questions about him. It’s not enough to just talk to people about their sins and how Jesus died for them. People need to know that Jesus died for their sins, but we also need to be able to tell people about the kind of life Jesus lived. We need to be able to tell them about Jesus.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote:

. . . the Church exists for nothing else but to draw [people] into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose. It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in him.

We need to learn more about Jesus that we might be able to tell people about Jesus.

Michael Frost tells about a friend of his who’s an atheist. Michael says this man loves Trotsky. Trotsky was a Soviet Marxist who died in 1940. Michael says his friend reads the writings of Trotsky over and over again. He knows just about everything there is to know about the man and quotes him often. They’ll be carrying on a conversation and the man will say, “That reminds me of something Trotsky said,” and then accurately quote him. The man can tell stories about Trotsky’s life and the books he wrote.

How much more should we as Christians be able to quote Jesus and tells stories about his life? We need to learn more about Jesus. Let’s ask God to show us more about Jesus that we would be able to learn and understand more and more about Jesus. First, we need to learn about Jesus.

Second, we need to learn from Jesus.

We need to learn about Jesus, but we also need to learn from Jesus. There’s a difference in these two types of learning. The first is just learning some information which informs our minds, the second is allowing the person to inform the way we live. I can read biographies about George Washington. I can study his life and writings so that I could pass a test on his life without his life ever affecting my life. But that’s not the way we want it to be in our relationship with Jesus. We want his life to affect our lives. We want our lives to become more like his life.

Think about the term most often used to describe those twelve men that followed Jesus? They were called his disciples. What is the term the disciples used to describe Jesus? He was their rabbi. A rabbi is more than just a teacher and a disciple is more than just a student. A rabbi was one who poured his life into the life of his disciple. The disciple didn’t just learn facts and figures; the disciple learned how to live like the rabbi. That’s what we see in the New Testament as the twelve spent three years with Jesus learning from him. Jesus describes it this way in our passage.

28Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

Come, Jesus says, and learn from me and he used a yoke as an example. A yoke was a vivid illustration for people who heard Jesus. The people had seen oxen and they’d seen the yoke that the oxen wore. The yoke was a double yoke. A farmer would put two oxen together. When a young ox was being trained it would be paired with an older, more experienced ox. Early in the day the young ox, still full of energy, would want to go fast while the older ox knew how to pace himself for the full day. At the end of the day the young ox would be tired, but the older ox, having paced himself, still had energy for the job. The younger ox would learn from the older ox. How long would it take the young ox to learn how to plow properly? It took a while. The young ox spent weeks if not months with the older ox learning from him.

Similarly, Jesus is calling for his disciples to come alongside of him and to learn from him. He wants us to get close and intimate with him. He wants us to imitate his way of life. He wants us to adopt his lifestyle as our own. And that’s exactly what the disciples did.

In Acts 4 Peter and John are standing before the Jewish court in Jerusalem for preaching about Jesus. We read:

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)

Peter and John hadn’t just learned some things about Jesus as they walked with him, they had learned from Jesus and what they learned influenced their lives. Even these religious leaders who despised Jesus recognized that. Later, Paul wrote to the Corinthians saying:

Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:1)

Paul was a student of Jesus. He had made his life a habit of imitating Jesus. So much so, that he could encourage others to follow his example because he knew it was the example of Jesus. It’s not enough to learn about Jesus, we must also learn from Jesus that we might become like Jesus.

How many recognize the initials WWJD? They stand for “What would Jesus do?” The intention is to ask what Jesus would do in the situations in which we find ourselves. We are not to ask what Jesus would do if he were here, but rather what Jesus would have us do if he were us. If Jesus were a banker, teacher, or student what would he do? We are encouraged to ask that question because the Bible encourages us to live like Jesus – not the walking on water part, but the loving and forgiving part. But how will we know how to answer the question of what Jesus would do if we haven’t learned from him?

So here’s the homework. I don’t know what kind of Bible reading you are currently doing. Whatever you are doing I want to encourage you to continue it. If you’re not doing any daily reading I want to encourage you to try this. Start reading a chapter of a gospel every day and read the same chapter for four days in a row. If you start with the gospel of Mark read Mark 1 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Keep and journal and on the first two days ask this question: What do I learn about Jesus. Just write the facts you learn about Jesus. On the last two days answer the question: What do I learn from Jesus. When you finish Mark move on to another gospel. When you finish the four gospels start over again. The goal is to see how quickly you can read through the gospel but to learn about Jesus and to learn from Jesus. The goal is to allow Jesus to influence the way you live. Reading a chapter a day doesn’t take very long, but if you will do this consistently it will change your life even as spending time with Jesus changed the lives of his disciples. So read the gospels over and over. Learn all the gospels have to say about Jesus and his life, but also allow Jesus to influence your life.

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