What Is a Disciple?

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Transcript:

Well, if you have a really good memory, you may remember that since about the beginning of the year, I’ve started talking about not a new direction, but rediscovering the direction that the New Testament gives the local church. Emphasizing what God emphasizes for us to do. The jobs that He’s left us to do.

And I’ve talked about three things. Christ-centered worship, Christ-centered preaching, and Christ-centered discipleship. and how if it doesn’t fall into one of those categories, it’s extra.

Not to say we can’t do other things at times. You know, I enjoy when we have lunch together as a church. That’s really not any of those three things, but there’s nothing wrong with it either.

I guess you could stretch it and say it’s discipleship if we’re talking about spiritual things, but a lot of times we just shoot the breeze. But as far as the things that we focus on, the things that we contribute a great deal of time to, things we really should focus on are Christ-centered worship, Christ-centered preaching, and Christ-centered discipleship. And we’ve had message series on the first two, kind of explaining what they are.

And I was sitting here this morning trying to think back through some of the points that I preached in those and can’t really remember a whole lot, so we may need to go back and have a refresher. Today, though, we start talking about Christ-centered discipleship. And some of you may be sitting out there worship, preaching, discipleship.

Where’s evangelism? Evangelism’s in there. That’s what Christ-centered preaching is about.

It’s not just helping you see Christ in the Bible. It’s not just helping you learn about Christ. It’s also telling the lost world about Christ. But evangelism is also part of discipleship, ladies and gentlemen. Because discipleship, very loosely defined, I don’t know if anybody else uses this definition.

This is the definition I understand of discipleship. Is taking somebody from where they are in their spiritual walk and helping them to get where they need to be. Folks, discipleship makes conversion necessary.

They cannot become a disciple without first being converted and born again. And so that’s why for so many years, when we talk about the Great Commission, which actually says nothing about evangelism, as I’ve pointed out and as Brother Pullen pointed out a few weeks ago. It talks about baptizing, and it talks about teaching people to observe all things whatsoever He’s commanded them.

Folks, that implies conversion, because somebody’s not supposed to be baptized before they’re converted, and somebody cannot follow everything Christ has called them to do without being converted. So the call to make disciples really is a call to lead people to Christ, and then not just leave them there. See, that’s the problem.

So many years, if we’ve done anything at all, and I don’t mean just our church, I mean churches in general, if we’ve done anything at all toward the spiritual growth of other people outside, it’s been to evangelize and then just leave them there and move on to the next person. When our job is so much more complicated, maybe not so much more complicated, it’s so much more involved than that, our job is not just to birth spiritual babies, but to help them to grow to maturity in Jesus Christ. That’s what this series of messages will be about, is Christ-centered discipleship. And we begin this morning with the very simple question of what is a disciple?

And if we asked that question, a lot of people would say, well, it’s the twelve that walked with Jesus. Well, they were disciples, yeah, but they weren’t the only disciples, and they were not the only ones intended to be disciples. Try to get a definition of disciple.

A minute ago, I talked about the definition of discipleship. Try to explain what a disciple is, and we might have some difficulty. The world kind of understands discipleship sometimes, sometimes I think better than we do.

And as I read Matthew chapter 10, which is where we’ll be this morning, I’m really struck by that fact because everywhere I see Jesus talking about discipleship, talking about what his disciples are supposed to do, I think about how Christians as a whole fall short of his description. But the more I think about it too, the more I realize it’s not just some anonymous them out there who profess to be Christians and don’t really follow through, don’t go to church, don’t read their Bible, don’t care anything for spiritual things. It’s not just some anonymous them who fall short of the picture of being a disciple.

Folks, it’s me. When I read the expectations that Christ has for people who are disciples, I realize I fall short, as do we all, of what he expects a disciple to be. And the reason I said a moment ago that the world sometimes understands this better than we do is not that the lost world are better disciples of Christ than we are, it’s just that they’re better disciples of somebody.

Now, if you’ve listened to me for any period of time, you know I’m a student of history. And you need look no further than some of the most famous parts of our history to understand what I mean when I say the world understands discipleship or being a disciple of somebody better than we do sometimes. How many people who should have known better gave up everything in their lives to follow Adolf Hitler and oriented their entire lives around Adolf Hitler.

An entire generation of German children was raised, and he said in his own words, to not have a conscience, but to follow him instead. I’m not telling you this morning we should not have a conscience, but from the time they were born, everything in their lives was supposed to be oriented around the leader they followed. Same thing in China with Chairman Mao.

In the mid-70s, teenagers, some of you have complained about teenagers to me. You think teenagers in this country are bad. Teenagers in China in the mid-70s tore the country apart at the insistence of Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution because he wanted them to.

And all he had to do was open his mouth, and millions of teenagers and college students did his bidding. We look at people who will follow military leaders, who will follow politicians, who will follow even religious leaders, human beings today, and they orient their entire lives around that person, around that leader, And don’t give a second thought to carrying out what that leader says. I’m not telling you this morning to follow me in that regard.

Because we need to be disciples, but not of a human leader. We need to be disciples of a superhuman leader. We need to be disciples of God and human flesh.

We need to be disciples of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God the Father. And folks, if the world understands what it means to be a disciple, what it means to be a follower, that they give up everything for their leader, And they orient their entire lives around their leader, and he’s just a man. I hate to break it.

I hate to break it to the followers of Kim Il-sung. They still worship him in North Korea. I hate to break it to the people who are still loyal to Charles Manson.

I hate to break it to all the people who hero worship at the, I don’t know, who’s the big pop icon that everybody worships now. I would say Britney Spears, but that’s like 10 years ago. whoever all the little children are worshiping now, if people are willing to give up their entire lives and orient their entire lives around a leader who I hate to break it to them is just a human being, why are we so reluctant to give up everything for Jesus Christ?

Why am I so reluctant to give up everything for Jesus Christ? See, a disciple is not just somebody, as we’ll see here in just a moment, a disciple is not just somebody who from time to time listens to a person and does what they say. There are people I hear on the radio and they’ll sell things or they’ll tell you check out such and such website or look at this politician.

I listen to a lot of talk radio. And sometimes I’ll listen and I’ll write my congressman about that, but I don’t hang on their every word and do everything they say. I’m just kind of a listener, not a follower.

But that’s how we treat Jesus Christ a lot of times. When it fits into our lives, when it’s something that really gets us excited, that’s when we’ll obey him. That’s when we’ll do what he says.

But to be a disciple is not a part-time occupation, ladies and gentlemen. To be a disciple is a full-time occupation. And it says in Matthew chapter 10, starting in verse 24, he’s about to send his disciples out to the lost sheep of Israel.

And they’re supposed to go, as it says in verses 6 and 7, to preach that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And he’s given them some instructions, and in verse 24, he says, the disciple is not above his master. Let me just repeat that.

the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his Lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master and the servant as his Lord. Some really important truths in those two verses, just the parts we’ve read so far.

You know, we would say that, that the servant is not above his master. The disciple is not above his master. We get that.

You know, if you owned a business and your employees came in day after day and told you what time they were going to be there, what their job description was going to be, what time they were going to leave, how long a lunch they were going to take, what you needed to do in the meantime, you’d fire them, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you? If not, I’m going to come work for you.

We’d fire them because we understand the employee is not over the employer. We understand the disciple is not above his master. The servant is not above his Lord.

We get that in here in our brains, but that doesn’t always translate to our behavior toward Jesus Christ. it is enough for the disciple that he be as his master and the servant as his lord folks our job is to try to be like jesus christ now I’m not saying we become some kind of divine person some kind of divine being but through christ’s sacrifice god imparted the righteousness of christ to us and god has left us with the holy spirit to convict us when we step out of line to point out where we need to shape up, to show us how to grow, to teach us truth from the scripture, to guide us. And now it’s our job that God has given us to try to be like Christ. We will never completely attain this in this lifetime, but it should not stop us from trying.

Should not stop us from trying to be like Jesus Christ. I know that until my children graduate high school, my house will never be perfectly clean again. I’ve given up after a lot of work and a lot of stress and a lot of emotional meltdowns after I clean the whole house and they mess it up in 10 minutes. My house will never be perfectly clean again, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to keep it picked up.

Some of you know what I’m talking about. For whatever reason, whether you have grandkids come over, your house will never be, some of you, it’s your husband, your house will never be perfectly clean again, but that doesn’t stop you from trying. Folks, we will never be perfectly like Jesus Christ, but that should not stop us from trying.

See, there’s a passage in the Bible, I should have thought to look it up, I want to say it’s either Ephesians or Romans, so you can go look it up for yourself. It’s at the end of one of those books. It talks about predestination, and it says that we’re predestined to be conformed to Christ. And as I’ve told you before, predestination was not about God predestining so-and-so to salvation and so-and-so not to salvation, but those who trust Christ, those who are saved, God’s plan all along has been for us to be conformed to who Christ is.

It’s been God’s plan all along that we should follow and emulate Jesus Christ. It’s enough for the disciple that he be as his master and the servant as his Lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? And folks, quite simply what that means is Jesus is telling them, you’re trying to be like me.

Your job is to go out to Israel on my behalf, preach that my kingdom is coming, tell the people about me and walk as I would have you to walk and you know what they’ve already called me the devil so just get ready they’re going to call you the same thing if the if the if the servant if the disciple is trying to be like the master and the master is hated by this world how can the how can the disciple expect not to be fear them not therefore for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed and hid that shall not be known there’s nothing the world can do in sin and in darkness that they think is hidden, that they think is concealed, that people can’t see, people won’t know about, that won’t come to light. What I tell you in darkness, that ye speak in light. What I tell you here, just among us, he said, I want you to go and tell others.

And what ye hear in the ear, the truths that I’ve whispered in the ears of my disciples, I want you to go, he says, that preach ye upon the housetops. The truths that Jesus had whispered to his disciples he wanted them to go and yell from the rooftops. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

And that’s not a threat from Jesus to the disciples, that somehow if they didn’t accomplish the task he’d set them out to do, that they’d be destroyed and their souls would be in danger of hellfire. What he’s telling them is, I’ve sent you out to do this. You’re going with my blessing, And at my instigation, don’t be afraid of the world.

All they can do is kill you. And I know that sounds like such a flippant statement. All they can do is kill you.

We serve a God who not only has power over life and death on this planet, we serve a God who has the power over the soul and body in hell and in eternity. Folks, there’s only so much that man can do to us, but we serve a God who’s in control over all of it. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father.

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. And we could go on from there, but this morning I want to focus in on just a few verses here.

In one of the places where Jesus talks about discipleship, you can’t read through the Gospels and not see that there is a high cost to discipleship, and yet we treat it so lightly. Hear me on this and understand what I’m telling you. There is not a cost to us for salvation.

If there was a cost to us for salvation, if there was something that we could pay toward our salvation, then the cross was entirely unnecessary. And if the cross was completely unnecessary, Jesus would have been a fool for going. Folks, the cross was necessary because we could not pay for our salvation.

We could not earn our salvation. It took Jesus Christ taking all the penalty, taking all the punishment that we owed, paying everything that was due. Jesus paid everything with his blood on the cross.

There’s not a cost to us for salvation, But there is a definite cost to us in discipleship. In following after Christ, after our salvation, that’s where the hard part is. It’s not impossible.

Again, He’s given us His Holy Spirit. He’s given us His Word. He’s given us certain promises that will help us along the way.

But there is a cost to being a disciple. See, the disciple is expected to lay down everything. First of all, this morning, if you’re following along in the blanks in your bulletin, A disciple belongs to Jesus Christ. What he’s talking about here is discipleship.

And he routinely compares discipleship, the relationship between a disciple and a master, to the relationship between a servant and a Lord. As his disciples, we belong to Jesus Christ. And it’s not by accident either that when he says disciple, he doesn’t say on the other hand mentor, he says master. Now, when we’re supposed to make disciples, I’m not anybody’s master.

I’m supposed to disciple people, and you’re supposed to disciple people to train them to follow Jesus Christ. But ultimately, ladies and gentlemen, he’s the master, not us. But to be a disciple means he’s the master, and we’re the disciple. It means he’s the Lord, and we’re the servant.

We belong to him. I’ve told you before. I’ve heard it before, but I’ve never heard it expressed any better than I’ve heard it expressed by Brother Gene, that we belong to Him.

We are slaves of Christ. Now, we don’t look on that as though He’s a tyrant and He abuses us and those sorts of things. But folks, we are slaves to Christ. We belong to Him. We were bought with a price and we no longer belong to ourselves.

A disciple belongs to Christ. And this, I think, is where I get in the most trouble in all of this. Well, maybe the third point is where I get into the most trouble. It’s not that I refuse to belong to Christ. It’s not that I refuse to recognize that fact.

It’s that sometimes I forget that I’m not just a follower. I’m not just a fan. I’m supposed to be a disciple.

I belong to Him. And we treat sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, we treat Jesus Christ at times as though He belongs to us. In a sense of salvation, He belongs to us.

We have the promise from God that the salvation He provides is ours once we’ve trusted in Him. But make no mistake about it. God, Jesus Christ, is not a genie in a bottle.

That when we’re in trouble, we rub the lamp and He does whatever we want. That we just call on Him to meet whatever need. Folks, we can call on Him to meet our needs.

But we just make wishes to Him. Or we pull Him out of our pocket whenever we need Him. Folks, He doesn’t belong to us.

We belong to Him. He’s the Master. And we’re the servant.

And we need to keep that straight. Again, you can’t ask Him for things. He desires to meet the needs of His children.

Sometimes we get away from that to where we think he works for us. He does not work for us. Second of all this morning, a disciple not only belongs to Jesus Christ, but a disciple tries to be like Jesus Christ. A disciple tries to be like Jesus Christ. Do you have a desire to be like Jesus Christ this morning?

You don’t have to answer that out loud. Deep down where nobody knows your thoughts but you and God, do you have a desire to be like Jesus Christ? I hope so.

I hope I do too. There are times when I can honestly say, today I want to be like Jesus Christ, and there are other days that in the flesh I just don’t feel like it. But then I go back to I belong to Him, and that’s my job is to be like Him.

And at least on the worst days, I’m hopeful that even if I don’t really feel like it, I want to want to. But folks, it’s our job to try to be like Jesus Christ. We will never, it’s kind of like cleaning the house again, we will never be completely like Jesus Christ, but that should not stop us from trying. In this lifetime, I will never be as good, as kind, as loving, as gracious, as holy.

Any of his attributes, I will never be as much of any of those things as Jesus Christ is. But you know what? I’d like to think I’m closer now than I was 10 years ago.

I’d like to think I’m closer now than I was 5 years ago. And I hope that 10 years from now, if the Lord tarries, and I’m still here, that I’ll be able to say I’m more like Christ than I was 10 years ago. And I can tell you, I’m usually pretty upfront with you all about my faults.

Maybe too much. But I’m the first to admit I’m not a perfect man. I’m the first to admit I think I let God down on a daily basis.

But I can look at who I was 10 years ago, and even then as a committed Christian, I can look and see where God has been sanding the rough edges off. And I’ll react to things in ways today that I would have reacted to completely differently 10 years ago. And I hope for each of us that’s the goal, is each day to be more like Jesus Christ, to look to Him as an example, to try to be just like Him, and then expect that the things the world says about Jesus Christ, they’re not going to take too kindly to us either for the same things.

Third of all this morning, a disciple surrenders everything to Jesus Christ. A disciple surrenders everything to Jesus Christ. When you become a disciple, when you become a disciple, your life is no longer yours. Your home is no longer yours. Your time is no longer yours.

Your bank account is no longer yours. So that sounds like a cult. There are churches that expect you to sign on the, well, not really churches.

They just call themselves that. Expect you to sign on the dotted line and your house is theirs, your boat is theirs, your car is theirs, your income, all that. I’m not asking you to do any of that.

Because, see, you don’t surrender everything to me, you don’t surrender everything to the church. We shouldn’t surrender everything to any man. But folks, a disciple surrenders everything to Jesus Christ. When I said no, maybe it is the third point where I have the hardest time, I forget it’s all his.

None of it’s mine. He lets me use it, but it’s not mine. I would do well to remember this suit belongs to Jesus.

These shoes belong to Jesus. My house, my children, my bank account, my children. I know I said that twice.

It’s all on loan from above. It all belongs to Jesus Christ. Sometimes it’s a daily process of saying, this is not mine and I’m not going to hold on to it quite so tightly. My time, even.

I spend days, I spend my days doing what I think needs to be done. What I need to get done. What I want to accomplish.

What I want to see happen. And they’re not necessarily bad things. But as a follower of Christ, as a husband, as a pastor, and a father, and a son, and all the hats I wear, all of those things would be better off if I would surrender my time to what Christ wants done and not what I think needs to be done.

And they were called to surrender everything to Jesus Christ. He tells them in verse 26 even to surrender their fear. Fear not them, therefore. Fear them not, therefore, for there is nothing covered.

And he tells them later, they can only kill you. He tells them in the passage before that they’re not to even take an extra coat, an extra pair of shoes, an extra walking stick. They were to leave it all behind.

Folks, everything is His. As a disciple this morning, have you surrendered everything to Jesus Christ? What are you holding back?

What are you clutching just a little too tightly? Fourth of all, this morning, a disciple goes where Jesus Christ leads him. A disciple goes where Jesus Christ leads him.

He says, what I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light, and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. They were being sent out to the house of Israel, the Bible says, to preach the kingdom of God. It would have been easier, maybe more comfortable, for them to stick around in Galilee or Jerusalem or wherever they had been at the previous time, but instead God says, go out.

Are you willing to go where God sends you? Are you willing to go where he sends you? Are you willing to go where Jesus Christ sends you?

If the answer is no, then we need to work on our discipleship skills a little bit. I said at one point there was a church that I really felt like God was leading me to go work at. And I said, no, I wasn’t going to do it because we were pretty well set up where we were.

Not talking about this one. But I had just gotten another full-time job. We had a house and said, you know, I couldn’t leave the house and the job and the health insurance.

And, you know, within just a few months, our house flooded. No more house to worry about. Some of the things that I was concerned about the health insurance for went away.

God made me absolutely miserable at that job. And I thought, I need to go where he told me to go. And I’ve told you before many times, it was never in my plans to leave Oklahoma.

Perish the thought. In my family, you don’t do that. You leave Oklahoma and bad things happen to you.

Well, okay, when I left Oklahoma, bad things happened there. But before that, I tell my mother all the time, what are you people doing over there? Now, in the past, when people have moved off to Arizona or Wyoming or Virginia, bad things have happened to them.

We don’t leave Oklahoma. And yet I felt like God was calling me back into the pastorate from church planting. The first church that called me was in Arkansas.

God, really? You want me to go? And here we are.

Folks, sometimes you go, well, let me rephrase that. You always go where God calls you to go. And that means sometimes you go where you never expected to go.

Where’s God calling you to go? I’m not trying to get you to leave Arkansas. I’m not trying to get you to leave Eastside.

I mean, if he does send you somewhere else, go there because you need to listen to God. But folks, where’s he telling you to go? In your job, in your family, in your witnessing, where’s he telling you to go?

It could be as simple as there’s somebody across the street, God’s telling you, you need to go talk to about Jesus Christ. Are you willing to go where God sends you to go? Maybe God’s calling you to go into missions. Are you willing to go?

The disciple goes where Jesus Christ leads him. Fifth of all this morning, a disciple teaches others to follow Jesus Christ. And I won’t tell you that this is a comprehensive picture of what a disciple looks like. There are other principles that we can find in Scripture, but these are the ones I saw in this passage this morning.

A disciple teaches others to follow Jesus Christ. See, as disciples, if we’re really following him, if we’re really going where he tells us to go, if we’re really doing what he tells us to do, if we’re really surrendered to him, if we’re really trying to be like him, then we’re going to lead others to find salvation in Jesus Christ and teach them to follow him as well. See, that’s what this whole series is going to be about. That it’s our job, first of all, to be disciples and then to make disciples.

that we learn ourselves how to follow Jesus Christ and we teach others how to follow Jesus Christ so that they can teach others how to follow Jesus Christ. And he tells them very clearly, what ye hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops. The truth that you’ve learned, you need to spread it. And they were to follow Christ and lead others to follow Christ as well.

It’s not in our notes this morning, but as we close, it occurs to me that a disciple also has the protection and provision of Jesus Christ. As we see when he says, Don’t fear those who are just able to kill the body. Be more concerned about him who’s able to kill the body and soul. He talks about how even the sparrows don’t fall from the air without God noticing, but that they’re so much more valuable than the sparrows, and even the hairs of their head are numbered.

I don’t have the hairs of my head numbered, although it’s getting easier as time goes by. But God knows what the number is. because His disciples are precious to Him.