Sermon Cloud

Last week I asked a question, how many of you have experienced a discipling relationship? A relationship where someone took time to invest in you personally and help you learn how to walk down the path of the Christian life – to help you understand what it means to follow Jesus? My first steps as a Christ follower came as another young man at my church met on night at a restaurant and introduced me to a series of booklets created by an organization called the Navigators.  And the first things I learned were stuff about assurance of my salvation. I memorized 1 John 5:11-12 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

And then I learned another verse that have always stayed with me:  Proverbs 3:5-6  Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all you’re your ways acknowledge him and he will keep your paths straight.  So my first introduction to discipleship included meeting with a guy who encouraged me to read and memorize God’s Word.  I don’t remember that lasting all that long.  I don’t even remember the guy’s name.  But I do remember that I had a strong sense that I needed someone come along side me and help me know what to do next.

Do I just go about my life and go to church once a week?  Is that it? Am I supposed to just read my Bible and pray?  What am I supposed to do? I knew there had to be something more, but I wasn’t sure what that was.  And I wonder how many of you feel like that? How many of you feel like you’ve missed a step? How many of you feel like you got off to a great start in following Jesus, but now you feel like you’re going nowhere?  How many of you feel like following Jesus doesn’t make much of a difference in your day-to-day living? If you struggle with any of these questions, you’re not alone.

Recently, leading church researcher, George Barna, after interviewing hundreds of people who regularly attend church and claim to follow Jesus wrote this conclusion: “Not one of the adults we interviewed said that their goal in life was to be a committed follower of Jesus Christ or to make disciples of the entire world, or even their entire block.  When this group was asked what they wanted to accomplish in life, eight out of ten believers pointed to finding success in family, career development and financial achievement.”  

Now I don’t know what your goal in life is today, but I do know that Jesus had one goal in mind for us as His followers – and that was to partner with Him in making disciples.  Disciplemaking is the mission Jesus gave us in Matthew 28:18-20.  From this passage Jesus tells us what’s involved in being a disciplemaker. And as He does, he introduces us to a third spiritual pathway: living the Jesus way. As we have talked about these spiritual pathways God has given us, we have learned that each one helps to cultivate an intimate relationship with God. Two weeks ago we learned that Praying the Jesus Way draws us close to our Father who is always for us and who wants His will to be done in our lives. Last week we learned that Loving the Jesus Way cannot be disconnected from obeying His commands.  When we obey, Jesus not only reveals himself to us, but both He and the Father make their home in our hearts.  Now this week as look at Living the Jesus Way, we see another promise of Jesus – as we go about making disciples, new apprentices of Jesus, Jesus promises to always be with us.  It’s another promise of His presence with us – another promise that results in cultivating our relationship with God.  So if you feel like you’ve stalled out in your Christian walk, if feel like you’re not going anywhere on your journey with Jesus, it could very well be that you’ve never been introduced or never really embraced this pathway.  Listen again to the life Jesus calls us to from Matthew 28: Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: "God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I'll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age."  (The Message)

Jesus shows us here in this passage his plan for changing the world one person at a time.  He not only tells us whom we are to transform into followers, but also shows us what it takes to be a disciple.  He gives us the end product that we are aiming for if we are going to make a disciple.  So who qualifies as a disciple?  Let’s begin there:

1. A disciple is someone who believes in Jesus! 
So Jesus begins by saying; “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.  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.”  Here Jesus gives us the command: “Make Disciples” This is the purpose in life as Christ followers. We are to be about the work of producing apprentices of the life of Jesus.  This is God’s plan for establishing the kingdom of God on earth. This is the way God has chosen to bless the nations through Jesus.  It’s His only plan, and it rests on us submitting to His authority. Now, Jesus rarely resorts to using power statements.  But here as He is about to leave the earth, and uses his strongest statement claiming absolute authority in all the universe to make His point. Do we believe Jesus has the authority to call us to this mission with him?  I would say this “Someone who believes in Jesus will choose to submit to the authority of Jesus.”

And yet that’s precisely what’s involved in taking the first step of being a disciple of Jesus.  If you believe in Jesus, you will trust him enough to submit to his authority, and you will show your willingness to submit to His authority by being baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  For when you get baptized you are not just declaring your faith, but you are identifying yourself as a disciple of Jesus.

Baptism is just a symbol of our conversion.  Baptism was given to be more than that. It was given to show our first step of obedience as an apprentice of the life of Jesus.  The very picture of baptism shows this:  It shows that you have died to your old way of life, that that way of life was buried along with your sins, and that you have risen with Christ to a new way of life.  You are now entering the life of an apprentice in the words and ways of Jesus, you are saying that you are now letting Jesus lead you, letting Jesus call the shots, letting Jesus take the wheel. You are saying, “I no longer live, but the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20) That’s the first step of living the Jesus way.  You take a step of submission, a step of obedience and you make it public. A disciple is someone who believes in Jesus and shows it by submitting to His authority by being baptized.  Secondly,

2. A disciple is someone who learns from Jesus  
Jesus now says, “Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.”  You see the most basic definition of a disciple is a learner.  A disciple is a student of the life of His master.  These disciples understood this.  This was very familiar to them.  This was common knowledge in the first century.

First Century Discipleship focused on a teacher – disciple relationship. This teacher-disciple relationship was similar to a servant-master relationship. Once accepted as a disciple, a young man would work his way up the discipleship ladder.  As a beginner, he would be required to sit in the back of the room and not speak.  After learning and observing for some time, he would make the step of becoming a distinguished student and could now begin to ask questions.  At the next stage he got the privilege of sitting immediately behind the rabbi during prayer time.  Finally, he could rise to the highest level where he reached the “disciple of the wise” status, and was recognized as the intellectual equal of his rabbi.

What these disciples learn as they go through these steps is that they begin by learning the teacher’s words verbatim so they could pass them along to the next generation. The also observe how their teacher keep the commands of God.  They look at his life and see how he practices the Sabbath, fasting, prayer, and other disciplines of the faith.  Then they seek to grasp their rabbi’s teaching methods.  The highest calling of any disciple was to imitate his teacher.  Finally, in the first century there was a clear, nonnegotiable expectation that every disciple would reproduce in finding and training his own apprentices.

The only difference Jesus introduced here is that these disciplemakers would not be making disciples of themselves, but of Jesus.  We do the same today.  When you become a disciple of Jesus, you enter into a relationship with a disciplemaker who points you to the life and teachings of Jesus, not of himself.  As Jesus himself said, “Students are not greater than their teacher. But the student who is fully trained will become like the teacher.”  Luke 6:40  So Jesus’ disciples learn from Jesus so they could become like Jesus.

So what does a disciple learn from Jesus?
•    A disciple learns the words of Jesus
All disciples are to be taught to obey everything that Jesus has commanded so that we become increasingly like Him.  All that Jesus communicated by word of mouth is included in his commands, whether they are teachings, proverbs, blessings, parables or prophesies.  

Jesus said to His disciples: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want and it will be granted.” John 15:7 A disciple learns the words of Jesus with the intent of applying what He learns in his life and eventually in the life of another.

•   A disciple learns the ways of Jesus
When one submits to the authority of Jesus, it’s surrender to ever other way of living.  Jesus is offering a new way to live, the way he lived among us, the way of a servant - to live for the sake of others.  Jesus says it this way to his disciples:  “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am.   And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.”  John 13:13-15 Finally,

•   A disciple learns the character of Jesus
You won’t be able to learn the words of Jesus or embrace the ways of Jesus unless you are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus. Ultimately, what we learn as an apprentice is to become like Jesus.  A disciple pursues Jesus so that he or she might experience a changed life. And the more we change, the better chance we will have to change our world.  Dallas Willard says it this way: “Widespread transformation of character through wisely disciplined discipleship to Christ can transform our world.”

But just learning about the character of Christ isn’t what changes us.  We need to practice the same habits or disciplines that Jesus practiced so God’s Spirit can do the changing. Jesus voluntarily set aside the use of His divine character when he became a man. All the holiness, love and compassion he practiced during his life were learned by embracing disciplines taught to him by his earthly mother and father.  He learned obedience from them, they taught him the practices of Scripture memorization, they showed him how to spend time alone with God.  Jesus didn’t just practice his spiritual gifts or maximize his natural talents.  He learned the habits of live a godly life.  This is why Jesus calls us to make other disciples.  He doesn’t just call pastors or Sunday school teachers to do this.  He calls disciples to make disciples. We need those who have learned the commands, ways and practices of Jesus to personally invest in us and show us how to obey, how to serve and how to live.  We were not meant to figure this all on our own. In other words, to make a disciple you’ve got to be a disciple!     Jesus calls each of us to submit to another Christ follower in an accountable relationship where we can see what it looks like to follow Jesus - where we have someone who can answer our questions, encourage us when we fail, correct us when we go astray and affirm us when we’re getting it right.  This can’t happen in a worship service. I can’t show you how to follow Jesus by preaching alone.  The chances of it happening in a small group are little better.  But what we really all need is another person to walk with on this journey.

And here’s the difficulty:  To be a disciple, you’ve got to be willing to submit yourself to another person and let that person teach you and show you what it means to follow Jesus.  This is not easy for us in our individualist culture.  But the truth is, until we learn to do this, we’re going to have a hard time making disciples of others.   Jesus never meant disciplemaking to be done in a classroom; he meant it to be worked out in relationship.  That means if you want to travel the disciplemaking pathway you’ve got to learn to submit yourself to someone who will show you what it means to follow Christ.

But there’s another difficulty facing us if we’re going to make this thing work:  It’s the lack of available Disciplemakers. It’s the lack of people who see themselves as capable of showing others how to live the life.  And one of the reasons for this is that most of us have never experienced a discipling relationship ourselves.  But here’s where Jesus offers us hope.  Here’s the good news in taking this pathway of disciplemaking.  And that is this:  

3. A disciplemaker is someone who chooses to partner with Jesus in His way of life   When Jesus says, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations,” he is saying, that as you go along your way of life, you are to go as ones sent by Jesus to people who need Jesus, and every person of every nation needs Jesus – and we’re the ones who are to go and show them what it looks like to follow Jesus.  This is the commission – a partnership with Jesus to go to people as Jesus’ students - whether that means to go across the room or across the street or across an ocean: God’s plan for helping change the world is for each one of us to take Jesus to someone else.  But never does He say that we’re to go it alone.  Here’s the good news: Jesus says that “wherever we go and make disciples,” he will be with us.  Whenever we’re about making disciples of Jesus we will experience Jesus’ presence.

So if you feel like you’ve stalled out in your journey with Jesus it may be that you’ve simply forgotten this promise or never been introduced to this way of living.  If you feel like your version of Christianity has become boring or dull it may be because you’re not investing in another person.  And if you feel like the goals in life just aren’t making it happen for you it may be because Jesus has a bigger goal in mind for you. And if that’s you, maybe it’s time that you surrendered anew to the authority of Jesus be his disciple and start living the Jesus way and become a disciplemaker.  For…

 “Someone who believes in Jesus and submits to his authority will learn from Jesus how to live like Jesus and then go and teach other disciples for Jesus.”