Following, Finding, and Leading

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Transcript:

Would you turn with me to John chapter 1, please? John chapter 1. This morning and tonight, we are finishing up the series that’s been going on for about two months now on discipleship and making disciples.

And from there, maybe not next Sunday, but soon, from there we’re moving on to the next series, which is on prayer. And it almost sounds funny to ask you this, but I want you to pray for the series that we’re going to be studying on prayer. that we as a church would learn better how to use this incredible tool that God has given us, this incredible connection we can have with Him.

And folks, it doesn’t matter how well we pray, we can always learn to have a better prayer life, to learn how to be better in that sense of connection to God through prayer. I’m anxious to learn with you as we go through this. And as I mentioned in the article in the bulletin, I hope that we all will come to that series and come to God’s word with the same attitude of the disciples who came to Jesus and said, Lord, teach us to pray.

Not only how to pray, we look at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, what we call the Lord’s Prayer. We look at the passage just before that, and we a lot of times gloss over what’s said there and think they said, Lord, teach us how to pray, because he did kind of give them a model prayer. But folks, they weren’t just asking, teach us how to pray.

They were saying, Lord, teach us to pray. And I hope that through the study of God’s Word, He will teach us not only how to pray, but that He’ll teach us to pray. But this morning, we come near to the end of our series on discipleship and disciple making.

And if you’ll remember back the last several weeks, we’ve talked about, when we began the series, we talked about what is a disciple. That essentially a disciple is somebody who follows Jesus Christ, who belongs to Jesus Christ, who is in essence a slave to Jesus Christ. And I know that word has all sorts of negative connotations in our society. But folks, that’s a good thing.

That’s what we are expected by the Bible. That’s what God’s Word tells us that we are, is slaves of Jesus Christ. We’re bought with a price. We no longer belong to ourselves.

And even though I struggle with this, and I know you struggle with this as well, giving up and surrendering on a daily basis, when we are purchased, when we are born again, when we are bought with the blood of Jesus Christ, we are supposed to give up the right to control our own lives. Now, I’m not trying to sound cultish and say that means we get to control you. It’s not up to me to control your life.

It’s not up to the church to control your life. It’s up to Jesus Christ through his word to direct the steps you take throughout your life. But I give up the right or should give up the right on a daily basis to be the Lord of my own life.

I’ve told you before that if I had been calling the shots, I would have chosen a very different career path because I was planning to be governor of Oklahoma before God called me into ministry and then God called me to come to Arkansas. Or as I like to say, from one promised land to the other. That way nobody’s upset.

And so a disciple is somebody who on a daily basis gives up the right to be Lord of their own life and instead follows Jesus Christ out of gratefulness for what he did in shedding his blood to pay for our sins at Calvary. We talked about what disciple making is. Discipleship means following Christ and disciple making is very simply put the process of taking someone from where they are spiritually to where they need to be which is salvation and spiritual maturity in Jesus Christ. See, it’s not enough just to lead people to Christ. That gets them into heaven.

But as far as any greater impact, we are missing out. If all we do is lead people to Christ and then just move on and abandon them, move on to the next person. It’s our job as believers, it’s our job as a church to help people, especially help young Christians grow spiritually until we all come to maturity in Jesus Christ. And we talked about all the various stages somebody can be in.

We talked about people in the place of ignorance, that they don’t know anything about God or the gospel. People in the place of irrelevance where none of this matters to them. Yeah, they’ve heard of God, they’ve heard of Christ, none of it really matters.

They’re just going to live their own life. We talked about people at the point of understanding. I’m sorry, at the point of belief.

I believe God and Jesus are real. I may even believe heaven and hell are real. But folks, we know that’s not enough. It’s a point of understanding where people understand, yes, Jesus came to save mankind, but as I gave you, there were all kinds of theories that theologians have about why Jesus came and how his coming was for mankind. Folks, if we don’t believe that Jesus Christ shed his blood as a payment for our sins, we’re missing out on the gospel.

We have to believe Jesus Christ paid for my sins and for your sins. He didn’t just come to save the earth in some abstract way. He didn’t come, as some churches teach, to wipe the slate clean so now we can work our way to heaven.

Folks, he paid it all. We talked about people at the point of conviction, where they’re pricked in the heart by the truth that Jesus Christ died because of their sin. And conviction always compels us to some sort of action, whether it’s to reject God and run the opposite direction as so many people do, or to throw ourselves fully on God’s mercy, knowing we have no other plea at getting into heaven.

Talked about conversion, which produces a changed life as a result of what Jesus Christ does on the inside. When we’re born again by faith, by God’s grace, we become a new creature in Jesus Christ. We talked about becoming and belonging where we take our first steps as a believer, as believers. We take our first steps in learning God’s word and learning God’s will and applying those things to our lives as we discover them.

And belonging to a local church, being part of a body that will help us in that. Talked about service, learning not just to be fed in the church, but actually serving other people, serving in the church. and then we talked about replication last week, where replication says I’m going even beyond service, and it’s my desire.

It’s a God-given desire to make disciples, to train up other people behind me. And there’s no requirement in replication as a disciple that you have to know everything and be a great theologian in order to disciple somebody else. All you have to do is know more than they do, spiritually speaking.

All you have to do is be further on in the journey to spiritual maturity than they are. And some of you may think, I can’t teach anybody anything. Folks, if you have been saved, you know how to get saved, and you can begin the process of making a disciple with an unsaved person because they don’t know and haven’t experienced what you know and have experienced.

All you have to do is tell them what Jesus Christ did for you. Well, this morning, we talk about how some of this process works, and we will tonight as well, because I think we’ve made it too hard. I think we’ve made it too hard, I really do, that we’ve said, okay, we have to have a class, We have to go through all of these things.

During the year, except for the summer, we’ve gone through disciple way. And it’d be real easy to say, well, I’m doing discipleship because I’ve got this disciple way group that meets at my house and we study the scriptures together. Folks, that’s not all discipleship is.

And if you’re thinking, I can’t disciple somebody because I can’t teach a class, you’re still not getting it. And it’s very simple as we’re going to see this morning and tonight. We’re going to start in John chapter 1, John chapter 1, starting in verse 37.

We’ve got John the Baptist and some of his disciples, some of his followers, who are standing there when Jesus Christ comes walking along. And it says in verse 37, And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye?

Now they had just been told what you didn’t see unless you looked back, which is okay. In verse 36, as John the Baptist sees Jesus walking by, he tells his followers, Behold the Lamb of God. Okay, the Lamb of God is not just a title, but in that he’s talking about the Lamb of God, him being the perfect sacrifice, him being the one who would take care of the sins of Israel.

It says, Behold the Lamb of God. And when it says in verse 37, And the two disciples heard him speak, what that means is they had just heard John the Baptist identify Jesus as the Lamb of God, the one he’d been preaching about all this time. When the two disciples heard him speak, they followed Jesus.

Verse 38, Then Jesus turned and saw them following, saith unto them, What seek ye? Now, I’m always amused by the way Jesus asks questions in the Gospels that he already knows the answer to. What are you looking for?

And they said unto him, Rabbi, which is to say being interpreted, Master, where dwellest thou? Now, this is an important question for them to ask. When they’re calling him Rabbi, it says Master here, which means Lord, as we would put it sometimes.

It also means teacher. A Rabbi is a teacher that you studied under. You didn’t just study with, you studied under.

And so for them to identify him as their rabbi means that they were going to come and follow him and live under his teachings and go where he went and learn what he taught, they were to follow him. And they were under his care at this point. Where dwellest thou?

They’re asking, where are you going? Because we’re coming with you. And he saith unto them, verse 39, come and see.

They came and saw where he dwelt and abode with him that day, for it was about the 10th hour. So at that point, it was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I believe. So it’s getting on late in the day.

And he said, come and see where I dwell. And they came and saw, and they stayed with him from that point on. And one of the two which heard John speak in verse 40 and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.

Well, at this point, we’ve not really been, other than through the other gospels, if we’re just reading John’s gospel, we’ve not really been introduced to Simon Peter, but we’re about to be. One of the two which heard John speak him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, we have found the Messiah, which is being interpreted the Christ. And by the way, just to clarify this, a good point at which to clarify this, a lot of people, and maybe not in this church, but as I’ve talked to people, I’ve discovered a lot of people think Christ was part of Jesus’ name, as though it’s a last name.

I had a kid ask me one time what Jesus’ middle name was. What do you mean. Christ is not his last name.

Christ is a title. Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. So when they talk about him being the Christ, it’s not just, oh, Jesus the Christ, that’s his name.

They’re saying he is the Messiah. He is the one that God has promised through the prophets for all these thousands of years. And an incredible thing, after just having seen him and heard him speak briefly, Andrew runs to his brother and says, we have found the Messiah.

The one all these prophets have spoken of. The one who was foretold throughout the entire scriptures from Genesis on to Malachi, we found him. Verse 42, and he brought him to Jesus.

He brings Peter, Simon Peter, his brother with him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, thou art Simon, the son of Jonah, thou shalt be called Cephas. This is incredible in and of itself.

I mean, not really to us because we know Jesus is God. We know he’s capable of such things, but we can read between the lines and seats. Andrew didn’t introduce his brother here.

Peter didn’t introduce himself, because what sense does it make if Brother Daryl walked up to me and said, Hi, I’m Daryl, and I said, You, you’re Daryl. That would not make any sense. No.

Andrew brings his brother in, and Jesus, in his infinite knowledge, says, You’re Simon, the son of Jonah, but you’re going to be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone. The significance of that, I believe, is that they referred to Jesus as a rock. And every place I’ve looked at it where it refers to the word Peter, and it refers to Jesus as a rock, talking about a big rock and a little rock.

And I think of it as our English idiom, a chip off the old block. You’re going to be conformed to be like me, in other words, is what I believe Jesus is telling him. The day following, Jesus would go forth into Galilee, in verse 43, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.

So he goes into Galilee, finds a man named Philip, and says, you, follow me. He didn’t mean just follow me into town, follow me where I’m going, follow me into the store. No, come and be my follower.

Come and be my disciple. Now, Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. He was from the same town that Andrew and Simon Peter were from.

Philip, in verse 45, Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did right, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. So in just a very brief time of following Jesus, Philip realizes that he is the one we’ve been looking for. And just like Andrew ran to Peter, Philip, in his great joy at what he’s found, at the truth that he’s discovered, the very fact that will change their lives, in his joy and in his excitement, he runs to tell his brother, we have found the one we’ve been looking for.

And Nathaniel said unto him, can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. Now there have been historians who claim that the Gospels are inaccurate because Nazareth didn’t exist at that time.

Folks, there are historical records that they found within the last hundred years or so that refer to Nazareth being there in the time of Jesus Christ, but being a very small village. No wonder there’s very little mention of it in ancient history. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but there was very little mention of it because it was a tiny, tiny town, as some of you would say, a wide spot in the road.

And so what Nathaniel is saying here when he says, can anything good come out of Nazareth, was not that Nazareth had this bad reputation. Not like we would look at certain parts of town, and I don’t know where they are here, but I know back home what the bad parts of town are, and where we’d say, really, can anything good come out of that part of town? That’s not what he’s saying.

What he’s saying is, not that Nazareth has a bad reputation, but such a tiny, insignificant place. Really? The Messiah, the promised one of Israel, comes out of that place?

See, God’s program doesn’t make sense to us in our human understanding. If I was going to send the Messiah, I wouldn’t have him live as a carpenter in a tiny little town like that, an insignificant spot on the edge of Israel. I certainly wouldn’t have him born in Bethlehem, laid in a feeding trough.

No, he’d be born at the royal palace. But see, that’s why God is God and I’m not. He’s much better at figuring out how things should be.

And figuring out doesn’t even really explain what he does. He doesn’t have to figure it out. He just knows.

And Nathanael expresses this same disbelief or concern, really? The promised one of Israel from Nazareth? And Jesus saw Nathanael, we’re in verse 47 now, Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and saith of him, Behold an Israelite in whom is no guile.

He sees Nathanael coming and basically says, Here is a man who is pure of heart. Here is a man in whom is no bitterness, in whom is no hypocrisy. Here is a good man.

And Nathanael said unto him, Whence knowest thou me? How do you know me? How do you know anything about me?

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. He said, I saw you over there, and I knew who you were. Nathanael answered and said unto him, Rabbi, saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these. He said, Because of this little thing where I said, I saw you over there and knew who you were, You’re willing to believe that I am who they say I am?

You haven’t seen anything yet. You have not seen anything yet. If that little experience is enough to make you believe, just wait.

And folks, as they followed Jesus, they were about to see incredible things. They were about to see the lame made able to walk. They were about to see the blind restored their sight.

They were about to see the dead raised back to life. These are not things that happen every day. They were about to see incredible things.

And he saith unto him, verily, verily, truthfully, I say unto you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. What I want to talk to you about from this passage this morning is what happened with the brothers when they began to follow Jesus Christ. Because what we see here is a very, very early example of discipleship. Now ultimately, in these relationships that go on, it was Jesus who was to do the discipling.

But in the sense of being the ones to bring their brothers to Jesus Christ, They had begun to make disciples of their brothers. And there are about three steps that I see out of this, and this is not a scientific formula necessarily. You need to do this, and you need to do this, and you need to do this, in this order, and it’ll always work out, and you’ll make disciples.

More of things that I see we need to have in order if we are going to make disciples. Step one is that disciple-making involves following Christ ourselves. Disciple-making involves following Christ ourselves.

It’s a very simple fact that you can’t really lead somebody where you’ve not been. You can’t really lead somebody where you’ve not been. I remember last year trying to get out to camp, and Brother Jack had been there before, and he was driving one of the vehicles, and I had not been there before, and I was driving another vehicle.

And he said, I’m not really sure. I don’t remember where to go when we get into Grove. And I said, that’s all right.

I’ve got the address. I’ve looked it up on a map. Folks, I tried to lead Brother Jack somewhere I had never been.

The campground is on the edge of a lake, and we ended up somewhere that looked like it had not seen water. since the Reagan years. And I thought, there’s no lake around here.

And I learned very quickly, you can’t lead somebody somewhere you’ve never been. I remember back in high school, I was having a lot of trouble in an advanced math class, which really wasn’t fair because I like numbers. And I like statistics, and I like doing the math problems to figure out what I should do in life.

Should I buy this butter or should I buy that butter? Ask my wife, it drives her crazy. But I was having trouble with advanced math, and I had a friend at church who said, hey, I can tutor you in that.

She said, but I don’t know how I’m going to have the time because I’m having trouble in Spanish. I’d never taken a Spanish class, but I’d picked up a few, now I have taken Spanish classes and know how foolish I was, but I had picked up a few words around Oklahoma City, and I thought it really can’t be that much different from French. Yeah, yeah, that’s why they need translators when the president of France goes to see the king of Spain.

It is different. Let me just dispossess you of that notion if you thought the same thing I did. French and Spanish, very different languages, just because they have common roots.

English has roots with German. And yet, when I watch documentaries, I don’t understand what Hitler was saying unless they put the subtitles, because they’re very different languages. And I thought, here I am trying to teach this girl Spanish, and I’m trying to lead her somewhere I’ve never been.

Folks, it doesn’t work. Now, you may have the story that’s the exception to the rule, but by and large, it does not work to lead somebody to places we have never been. These men were able to lead their brothers.

Andrew and Philip were able to lead their brothers to Jesus because they had gone and followed him themselves. They had heard the teaching about who Jesus Christ was from John the Baptist, and not only that, they had responded to Jesus’ teaching by going and following him, and they had at least followed him for a little bit. Folks, I don’t know from the context here if they’d followed him for a day, if they’d followed him for a week, if they’d followed him for six hours.

The fact is, before they went and got their brothers, they had responded to Jesus’ call to follow me. And they had, even if they did not recognize at that time that he was the son of God, they recognized that he was the Messiah and they called him their rabbi. And folks, that’s not, again, I know I said this, but I really want this point driven home.

That’s not just like calling somebody a teacher in our way of thought. I’ve had plenty of teachers who’ve taught me plenty of things, but I don’t really want to follow the way they’ve lived their lives. When they went to study under a rabbi, when they went to study under him as their teacher and their master, their rabbi, they were to learn what he taught and they were to try to emulate him.

And so the very first step was they themselves had to follow Jesus Christ. We cannot lead someone to follow Jesus Christ if we are not following ourselves. I don’t mean following ourselves, but if we ourselves are not following Jesus Christ, how can we lead somebody else to follow him? And the beauty of this too is that it it does not require us to have followed him for all these years and have an advanced degree in Bible and have studied under incredible men.

Folks, they may have been following Jesus for a few hours when they ran to go find their brothers. But the fact is, they had something that their brothers did not, and that was the truth that Jesus Christ was the one they’d been looking for, and they followed him. Folks, if you want to make disciples, if you want to make disciples, and folks, I hope that is the desire of every person in our church.

I know men preach all the time about disciple-making to their churches with the expectation that only a few people are really going to do this. Folks, I hope we’re the exception. I may be disappointed, but that’s all right.

I’d rather aim high. I hope it’s the desire of every person in our church to be serious about making disciples. Even if you’re still sitting there and thinking, I don’t know how, at least for the desire to be there.

Folks, before we can make disciples, we’ve got to be disciples ourselves. So if you’re thinking, there’s something within me that says, I want to make disciples, but I know I’m not following the way I ought to be following, then that’s the first thing you need to get taken care of, is to discern from God’s Word and from the leadership of the Holy Spirit and spend time in prayer with God and find out from Him, where is it that I am not following? What area of my life is it that I am having trouble surrendering to Jesus Christ?

What is it He’s telling me to do that I’m not doing? And that’s what we need to get taken care of. We need to surrender to Jesus Christ and be disciples if we intend to be disciple makers.

Step two, disciple making involves finding our loved ones and telling the good news. Disciple making involves finding our loved ones and telling them the good news. Folks, I have no problem with people who go knock doors.

I have done it myself. I have no trouble with people who go and stand on a soapbox on a street corner somewhere and open air preach. I have no problem with that whatsoever.

I have no problem with going and talking to people out on the streets, passing out tracts and doing that sort of thing. I’ve done that before. But folks, I find it very interesting that these men, their first impulse was not, we’ve got to go run and tell everybody.

Folks, we do need to tell everybody. Don’t get me wrong in this. I’m not saying we should only offer the gospel to a few people.

I’m absolutely not telling you that. But their first impulse was not, I’ve got to go on a mission trip and I’ve got to go over to Jordan and tell everybody over there. Or I’ve got to take a ship up to Rome and tell everybody there.

Folks, their first thought was, I’ve got to go tell my brother. Now, as we’re trying to make disciples, if the Holy Spirit tells us go walk up to that complete stranger and tell them, then absolutely. If an opportunity presents itself for us to share the gospel with a stranger, if the opportunity presents itself for a conversation about the things of God with somebody we barely know, then by all means, take the opportunity presented.

But far too often, I’m guilty of this, you’re guilty of this, let’s just all admit we’re guilty of this. All too often, our loved ones are the hardest ones to talk to. And yet they are the ones God has put in our lives, and I don’t believe it’s by accident.

They are the ones who see our lives. They are the ones we already have a connection to. They are the ones that we already have a hearing with.

Now, they also can be some of the hardest to talk to about the things of God. I understand that. That’s why it’s so hard.

That’s why they’re some of the last we talk to because they’re sometimes the hardest. They know too much about us. Or we worry about what’s going to happen if they don’t want to hear what we have to say, what’s going to happen to the relationship. But folks, these men were driven by such excitement and such joy at the truth they discovered.

Their first thought was, I’ve got to go tell my family. And I’ve heard an approach that a pastor in New Orleans has used and taught his church. And it’s not so much an approach as an idea about where to start, But he called frangelism.

And the fran in frangelism stood for friends, relatives, associates, and neighbors. Now folks, obviously we don’t want to limit our ministry to just our friends, relatives, associates, and neighbors. But why not start there?

There’s nothing wrong with mission trips, and I can tell you from experience, it was much easier for me to say I’m going to fly to Quebec City, or I’m going to fly to Mexico, and I’m going to be on a mission trip, and I’m going to tell everybody I can about Jesus. I’m going to minister in every way possible. It’s easy to do that and be the people who fly in and do mission work and then go back home and now I’m among my own people and clam up.

There’s some reason it’s easier to go to strange places. But folks, our family, our friends, our relatives, our associates, our neighbors, they’ve not been put in our lives by accident. And many times we have an opportunity we don’t realize.

We share the gospel with them if they’ve never trusted Christ. We share the gospel as much as they’ll let us. And folks, when they’re done letting us share the gospel with words at that point, we live it so they can see it. We have people in our families.

We have people in our neighborhoods. We have people that are close to us already that God has put in close proximity. God has given us access to and an opportunity to reach who may be believers but are not following.

We have an opportunity to reach out to them about the importance of following Christ. We have an opportunity, the best opportunity I think sometimes we have, And the most overlooked opportunity that we have is to reach those closest to us. Just to make it abundantly clear, I’m not saying that we limit our ministry only to those in our immediate circle. But what a shame if we neglect our kids, if we neglect our parents, if we neglect our siblings, our neighbors, the people we work with, and just focus on people in other countries or other cities.

Folks, we need to begin missions and we need to begin discipleship at home. These men, their first, these men were incredible apostles, incredible disciples, incredible preachers of the gospel and missionaries who spread the gospel all over the known world at that time. But their first place they started was with those closest to them.

I think that’s a pretty good model for us. Preach the gospel to the four corners of the world. And yes, I realize the world doesn’t have corners.

But preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. Make disciples to the ends of the earth. But let’s begin at home.

Step three, disciple making involves leading them to follow Christ as well. We go and tell our family members the good news. But it wouldn’t have done much good if Andrew and Philip had said to their brothers, Hey, by the way, guys, we found the Messiah.

See y’all later. Folks, they told him the good news and they said, Come with us. Come follow him with us.

Come do what we’re doing. Verse 42 says of Andrew, says of Andrew and his interaction with his brother Peter, and he brought him to Jesus. He brought him to Jesus.

He didn’t just tell him about Jesus, didn’t just relay some facts about Jesus. He brought him to Jesus. Says Nathaniel, toward the end of the passage, Nathaniel went to see Jesus as a result of his brothers prompting.

Folks, with our friends, with our loved ones, with all the people we’ve talked about, you know who the people are in close proximity to you. I can’t list them all for you, but I can just about guess with each of you. It’s the people whose names and faces were going through your mind as I was talking about friends and relatives and associates and neighbors.

I have no doubt that for the majority of you, somebody’s name, at least one person’s name or face went through your mind. Folks, that’s who we’re talking about. It’s not just enough to tell them about Jesus.

We tell them the good news, and folks, if they hear the gospel, that is enough for them to get saved. Granted. But I use this illustration all the time.

Y’all are probably tired of hearing it. We would not bring a child into this world, birth a child, and then say, well, you have a good time now, and leave them to fend for themselves. They can’t do it, can they?

An infant can’t feed itself. An