Somebody tell me what you like about Christ Fellowship. Is it the people, the music, the building, my hair-do, Brian’s hair-do? What? I’ll tell you one thing I like about Christ fellowship. I look out here and sometimes see 20, 30, 40 or even 50 people and I know that not one of you is here by accident. In fact, I know that every single one of you was invited to come by somebody else at some point.
We don’t do any advertising and I don’t think that any of you just stumbled in here by accident thinking this was the library or the police station or the dog pound so I have to believe that at some point every one of you was invited by somebody else and I think that is just awesome! So, I think this is a perfect time to start thinking about what it is that we are actually inviting people to be a part of.
Are we inviting people to come to our church to enjoy the people, the music, the building or certain hair-dos? That may be part of what they will get when they come but that is not the reason that we invite people. If you look on our website it says that our reason for being here is to do whatever it takes to lead people to a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ. We have it and we want others to have it.
It is also another way of saying that our goal is to do what Jesus said to do in the Great Commission. The very last thing He told His disciples to do before He ascended back to Heaven was to what? Go and make disciples. He said, “Ok disciples. Go make more disciples.” He didn’t say to go and change people’s behavior. He didn’t say go clean up the world. He didn’t even say to invite people to church! He said go make disciples.
Søren Kierkegaard was a 19th century Danish philosopher, poet and author. He wrote in one of his books, “I went into church and sat on the velvet pew. I watched as the sun came shining through the stained glass windows. The minister dressed in a velvet robe opened the golden gilded Bible, marked it with a silk bookmark and said, "If any man will be my disciple, said Jesus, let him deny himself, take up his cross, sell what he has, give it to the poor, and follow me."
His point was that there is obviously a real disconnect between what Jesus said to do and what the church is actually doing. Perhaps that is because when I say, “Hey let’s do some discipleship!” how many of you light up and think about how much fun this is going to be? Of course you don’t.
But if I were to ask you for what you are thankful; if I were to ask you what characteristics of God do you love most; what has it meant to you to have a relationship with Jesus then you would want to tell people, right? Your life has been changed and you just want others to have what you have.
You want others to have the peace and joy in this nasty old world that is available to you. You want others to have eternal life in Heaven with Jesus instead of eternal Hell separated from God and all others. You want them to have not just a salvation experience that lasts for a moment but you want them to grow and mature to see that God is in control and gives us everything we need and more. Don’t you? That’s discipleship! That is discipleship and that is something we can get excited about!
Let’s live our lives learning from Jesus and teaching and encouraging others with what we learn. In fact, that is my personal definition of a disciple. A disciple is one who lives his life learning from Jesus and teaching and encouraging others with what they learn. Discipleship doesn’t have to be a program. You hear about how some churches have such and such discipleship program on Wednesday night or something. But I believe that if you have to program it, you are already doing it wrong.
Discipleship is a lifestyle. It is a choice that each of us makes every day. We have to choose to learn from Jesus every day because if we don’t, we will learn from somebody or something else. We also have to choose to teach and encourage others with what we learn. Again, because if we aren’t teaching them…who is?
So, you can see that true discipleship is two-pronged. We learn from Jesus and then we teach others. Also, I see in the book of John that Jesus made disciples using a 4-step approach. (Write on board) We will see His first of four steps in John chapter 1, verses 35-46. If you use the Bible in the pew in front of you it is probably on page 750.
I want you to see the first thing that Jesus does to make a disciple is to attract them. And this is amazing to me. I don’t know that I will ever understand how this worked. We know that it wasn’t how good-looking he was, no matter what the paintings and pictures you see portray. Isaiah 53:2 says, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”
In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, John the Baptist (not the author of the book) sees Jesus. Let’s pick it up from there in John 1:35-46.
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” 37 When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38 Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said,“Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” 39 “Come,”he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon. 40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41 The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). 42 And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter). 43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?”Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip.
For the month of January we are going to be looking through the book of John at what is a disciple; how did Jesus make disciples and how can we make disciples. Now, while I see four steps that Jesus used to make disciples, everybody is different. Jesus called some people differently than others. We know cultures change. We know people have all different gifts and talents and different testimonies and experiences.
My point is that while we can’t duplicate exactly what Jesus did, we can use Him as our guide and model - and we should. Because everybody is different, I want you to be prayerfully aware of how God can use you and your specific talents and abilities and testimony to go and make disciples. Again, this is not a program. It is a lifestyle and as such will be different for everybody.
So, let’s see first how Jesus did it. The first thing Jesus did was attract them. (Write on board) Since there was nothing about Him physically that was attractive there must have been something else. We see for the first two guys that had been following John as his disciples, it was just the fact that He was the Messiah. When John said in verse 36, “Look, the Lamb of God!” that was all he had to say and the two men dropped John like a hot rock and started following Jesus, which was fine with John because all of them knew that it was the Messiah – not John or anybody else – that was going to meet their needs.
So, the first thing Jesus did was He got their attention. He called them and then He got them to commit. All through the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John you see Jesus getting their attention, calling them (sometimes by name) and then He would get them to commit to following Him. Jesus seemed to have no trouble doing this. In fact, all Jesus had to do, obviously, was just walk past and people would start following Him.
Yet for us this first step seems to be the most difficult. We want people to know our Jesus but when we dare work up the courage to say anything about Him it seems to fall flat. Why is that? Why is it that the one in Whom we so lovingly and willingly follow and trust with our very eternities is irrelevant to most people today? How is it that Jesus has changed so much in 2000 years?
I’ll tell you why. It isn’t that Jesus Himself has changed but our culture, our world and the king of this world, Satan, has changed the way Jesus looks to people. People will change Jesus by either taking away from Him or adding to Him to suit their needs. Because Who Jesus really is is offensive to who people really are. Deep down, people know that Jesus and their lifestyle are not compatible and since they don’t want to change…they change Jesus.
They change Jesus into someone who is a good person but weak and unable or unwilling to help them. They change Jesus into religion that will just restrict them. They water Him down to make Him palatable or build Him up to be a genie in a bottle. Either way they do it He will be disappointing to them and therefore irrelevant to them.
So, this first step can be our most difficult. How do we introduce them to the real Jesus; the life-changing Savior and Redeemer and Friend? I’ll tell you how. We BECOME Jesus to them. We show them Jesus through us. We let them know that while we are far from perfect as Jesus was, that we do love like Jesus loves. Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
You say, “Oh pastor, you don’t know my neighbor. They are so mean. I can’t stand them much less love them.” Oh, I do understand. Everybody has a neighbor or an acquaintance or a relative like that and do you know what my advice to you is? Quit trying. That’s right. Quit trying to love that person and let the Holy Spirit love them through you. Turn it over to God, telling Him that you can’t do it but that you have faith that he can through you.
Then quote God’s Word back to Him that says in Galatians 5:22 that the fruit of the Spirit is love and you keep praying that and keep watching for your opportunity to be obedient to let God love that person through you. When you do that, it may not be that day or the next day but someday that person is going be attracted to you – and when I say attracted I don’t mean physically. But just like they were attracted to Jesus, they will be attracted to you and to what you say and do.
That is when you have the opportunity to take that first step like Jesus did. (Write on the board.) Jesus got their attention, called them and got a commitment to follow Him. You are going to meet people, meet their needs and get them into church. Let’s look closer at that.
What is it that people need more than anything else in this world? Is it money? Is it more stuff? Is it happiness? Is it a Corvette ZR-1 in Competition Yellow? No. No it’s not. What people need most is a Savior, right? They need eternity in Heaven. But what is probably going to happen if you go to your neighbor and tell him he’s going to hell if he doesn’t accept Jesus into his life?
It’s probably not going to go well after that, is it? But what would happen if you found out that your neighbor, your friend, your relative had some kind of need; some kind of problem, some kind of difficulty that you could help with? Then you helped that person with that need. Do you think that person would be more open to listening to you talk about most anything? Of course they would.
And do you know that the vast majority of people who don’t come to church don’t come because nobody has ever asked them? It’s true. Barna Research conducted a survey and the majority of people who don’t go to church don’t go because nobody ever asked.
Now, let me put a big asterisk here at the word *church*. This is to remind us that church is NOT the goal. The goal is to…what does our motto say? To do whatever it takes to lead people to a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ, right? However, as part of His first step in making disciples, Jesus would get a commitment from people. That’s what we are doing.
We need a little bit of commitment from them so that they see that those people down at that church are not quite as weird as they thought we were. Church never saved anybody. Contrary to what some people might think, the church doesn’t get extra points for how many people we have as members. Our goal is not to get more members of Christ fellowship. Our goal is to get more into the Kingdom of God.
I’ve told you this before but D.L. Moody, who was the great old-time preacher in Chicago in the 1800’s, once told the story about a little boy who walked all the way across town to go to church at Moody’s church. Somebody asked him why he went so far when there were lots of other churches much closer. "They may be as good for others, but not for me," was his reply. "Why not?" the person asked.
"Because they love a fellow over there," he replied.
Nothing I have said today is said with the intention of trying to trick somebody. We don’t get people into church and then spring the bad news on them. This isn’t a bait and switch scheme at all. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We don’t have bad news for them. We have the Good News! And we don’t do it because we are trying to trick them. We do it because we LOVE them and those we don’t love, we let God love their mean old selves through us.
This first step in making disciples is not complicated. Shoot, Jesus did it literally without breaking stride. But I know what you’re thinking when I say that. You’re thinking you are not Jesus. You can’t do all the things that Jesus did. Let me let Jesus answer that objection like only He can.
He says in John 14:12, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Do you believe that? The correct answer as you sit here in church is, “Yes, Todd, we believe it.” But do you really? Do you live like it? Are you allowing the Holy Spirit, Who lives in the heart of every believer, to work through you; loving others and meeting their needs?
If not, then maybe you don’t have the Holy Spirit living inside of you because you have never taken any of these steps toward accepting Jesus into your life to be Lord and Savior and to becoming His disciple. Today is the day of salvation. Do it today. Drop what you are doing like Andrew and Peter did and just “come and you will see.”
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