Discipleship
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Our mission - is to Glorify God, Equip the Saints, and to Share the Gospel. As a mission, this is the lens that we view all of the activity of our church - especially considering our time gathering together on Sunday mornings - because it is the center of our activity.
Primarily - we Glorify God. That is the center of our worship.
To make His name great in our lives. To give him the honor that He deserves.
The next goal in our mission is to equip the saints.
This comes from the scriptures that tells us that the offices of the church exist to equip the saints for the ministry of the Gospel.
That is a pretty broad scope, and ends up meaning that as a church - we exist to help each other become more like Jesus, in everything that we say, think, and do.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to look at discipleship, discovery, development, and deployment - as a paradigm we see in scripture for the formation of those who were close to Jesus.
Let’s pray and ask God to begin a new work in us.
<PRAY>
Our desire is to grow as christ followers. To mature. to be useful. And that is a good thing to want. If we understand - really - what Jesus has done on the Cross for us, what God has ordered perfectly for us, the things that he has taken care of on our behalf, the “all things” that he has made work together for our good - our natural response is a posture of thanksgiving, and a desire to be useful to Him and approved by Him.
Eden and I went to Evangel university - an Assembly of God liberal arts school that ended up absorbing their Bible college as well. While we were there, we had a friend we will call Jane.
Every time Jane did or said something that wasn’t really christian behavior, her excuse - out loud, was that she was “just a baby christian.”
Stubbed her toe and cussed - just a baby.
And that was kindof frustrating to me.
because girl - you aren’t from here, you didn’t just accidentally end up at a Jesus college. Stop excusing your behavior.
The reality is, a lot of us are “baby christians”
Even some of us that have been believers for a long time.
Pastor, I’ve been a christian for the last 20 years!
It looks like you have re-lived the first year 20 times.
We don’t have the markings of a 20 year christian.
The author of the book of Hebrews - written to Jewish Christians - dealt with this problem with his audience.
Hebrews 5:11-6:3
11 We have a great deal to say about this, and it is difficult to explain, since you have become too lazy to understand.
12 Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of God’s revelation again. You need milk, not solid food.
13 Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant.
14 But solid food is for the mature—for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.
1 Therefore, let us leave the elementary teaching about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, faith in God,
2 teaching about ritual washings, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
3 And we will do this if God permits.
The writer realized… wait. I am going too deep here, they ain’t gonna get it. And he was frustrated for it.
You should be teachers.
We want to move away from that. We want to be disciples that are mature - and useful to the Kingdom of God - Right?
Today we want to look at what it means to be a disciple.
What does it look like to really follow after Jesus.
How can we do it better.
How do we really grow.
One of the things that really frustrates me about christian events, is that they always seem to be focused on the baby christian. Men’s camps, youth camps, concerts, Bible studies, conferences. I don’t want men’s events to be “well guys we all got away from our wives for a few days. Guess we can talk about that porn addiction we were talking about last year. does everyone know what repentance is? That’s as far as we are going to get this weekend. See you next year so we can do it again - don’t forget to complain about your wife to someone in the yard before you leave to take a nap”
Youth camp follows the same schedule every year. Monday is you’re a sinner in need of forgiveness. Tuesday is specific to the story they are using. Wednesday is Holy Spirit night. etc.
We start going deeper, by engaging in a process of discipleship. That will lead us through discovery of truths of God, and ourselves - then to developement and deployement into the world.
The life of a believer should look like this.
Day 1. You accept the free gift of salvation, repenting from your sins and Declaring Jesus as Lord.
Day 2 through forever you walk with Jesus as a disciple, and in the world as a messenger.
200ish years before Jesus, a Rabbi named Yose ben Yoezer wrote
Avot 1:4
Let thy house be a meeting-house for the wise;
and powder thyself in the dust of their feet;
and drink their words with thirstiness.
The idea was to encourage people to make their homes a place of study, to welcome teachers and eagerly learn from them.
This was modernized to say - be covered in the dust of your rabbi.
There are two ways to accomplish this.
To sit at their feet - and to follow them closely. When sitting, you sit in the dust that they carried in with them, when walking you are so close that the dust they kick up lands on you.
Both are postures of eager learning.
Paul used “sitting at the feed of Gamaliel” as proof that he was an educated Jew.
What does that look like - practically?
Follow.
Learn.
Change.
Follow.
23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.
To follow Jesus - means more than just to chase after him. In fact, there were thousands who did that. People who saw Jesus as a motivational speaker. They were there when he said things they agreed with - and gone when he said anything they didn’t.
The rich man - and the multitude.
The invitation to follow Jesus always came with full disclosures. It always came with terms of service.
Now, sometimes we don’t read that. We just run headfirst into it.
That is part of the reason that I tend to avoid the “with every head bowed and every eye closed”
And yet - the invitation must be given, and I am thankful that Dan did it last week. It’s good. Many of us began our journey of faith with a moment just like that. It is something we cherish the rest of our lives.
We just have to understand, Jesus gave some terms.
He said pick up your cross.
Deny yourself.
Understand that you are giving up the things that you feel define you, for the purposes he has for you.
Your preferences - your order - your direction.
And those of us who have done that would say it is worth it. Right?
Follow means to go where he goes.
To do that, we have to see Him, and walk.
Where is Jesus going? What is He doing? What is the Holy Spirit doing today? What has he done?
Where did he go, where did he avoid? What did he do?
A lot of this, we can learn from the stories of Jesus - and then go forward into history.
Learn.
Study.
The life of a disciple is a life of learning. Listening to what Jesus said, and applying it to our lives. Dutifully studying the Bible, old and new testaments. learning contexts.
This is where the closeness comes in. We want to hang on every word that Jesus said in the New Testament.
If you rightly understand something about God from the old Testament, you rightly understand that about God now.
We have to learn.
4 For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures.
15 Be diligent to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth.
11 The people here were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, since they received the word with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
4 Make your ways known to me, Lord; teach me your paths.
5 Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; I wait for you all day long.
Change.
We are going to be different. The person that we were, is going to fall away.
Some of that is supernatural changing of the holy spirit, some of it is natural working of ourselves to get ourselves under control.
If we see Jesus saying something - or doing something - that doesn’t line up with our current understanding, CHANGE. You don’t get to be that way just because you have always been that way. You can and should and must do better!
22 to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires,
23 to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24 and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
Be open to the work that God is doing in you.
Jesus has called us to be his disciples.
So we follow him.
We learn from him.
And we change for him.
What did Jesus teach is only part of the equation.
How did he think - how did he behave.
When was he gentle and kind
Be covered in the dust of your Rabbi.
Follow so closely to Jesus that his footsteps affect us.
Discipleship is the first part of this cycle of living as a believer. As we live as disciples, we discover new things about our God, and new things about ourselves. As we grow old, we should become more mature and grow deeper. There shall be no baby christians here.