“Making Disciples” –Part IV -Motivate – John 13:1-17

Ex-Quarterback and ESPN commentator Joe Theismann, allegedly explaining to his soon-to-be-ex second wife why he had an affair: "God wants Joe Theismann to be happy." What do you think about that? "God wants Joe Theismann to be happy." Does God want Joe to be happy? Do you think that ex-wife wants Joe to be happy?

 

Before you answer, let me read you another quote by another “fascinating” celebrity: Marla Maples. Ms. Maples is probably best known for being one of the ex-wives of Donald Trump. Now, don’t get ahead of me here. Our focus this morning is most definitely not on ex-wives (thank goodness). I just happen to have quotes that deal secondarily with that. Marla Maples was asked about her religious roots. She believed in the Bible, she told interviewers, then added the disclaimer, "but you can't always take [it] literally and be happy." C. Colson, The Body, p. 124.

 

What do you think about that? Can you take the Bible literally and be happy? Does God want you to be happy? For those of you that have kids, I think that answer is pretty easy. Do you want your kids to be happy? Of course you do. Just the same, God wants His kids to be happy as well. Now, as far as taking the Bible literally, can that make you happy?

 

Let me ask you a question. Is our happiness the goal of the Bible for our lives? If not, what is the goal of the Bible for our lives? I believe the goal of the Bible is to make us more like Jesus. From the Old Testament to the New Testament we see models for how to live our lives to ultimately become more and more like Jesus. Since that is the goal, then obviously happiness is out, right? I mean, we know that Jesus wasn’t happy. He died on a cross. He lived His life in poverty. Surely He wasn’t happy. Right? Wrong.

 

The Bible says over and over that He had great joy – even just before His death on the cross. Yet we know that joy and happiness are two different things so what did Jesus know about happiness? I’ll tell you by doing something I wouldn’t normally do. I want to read the last verse of our sermon passage this morning and I want to read it first.

 

We will read the whole thing again in just a minute so don’t worry if you can’t find John chapter 13, verses 1-17 in time. I want to read verse 17 first because to me it is fascinating. John 13:17 says, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” Did you see that? The word “blessed “means “happy”. The King James says, “…happy are ye”. They mean the same thing. Jesus is telling His disciples – including us as His disciples – how to be happy.

 

Do you want to be happy? Sure you do. Everybody wants to be happy. So, how do you get happiness? If you listened to the TV, the happiest people are the celebrities with their big cars and fancy houses and beautiful faces. You know the ones I’m talking about. I mean the ones who commit suicide and get multiple divorces and go to rehab as often as most of us change socks. The world wants you to think those are the happy people.

 

But Jesus, like so often happens, says something just the opposite. He is concerned about your happiness and tells us the secret of it right here in John 13:1-17. Let’s read the whole thing right now. If you grab the Bible in the pew in front of you it is probably on page 763.

 

It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God;

 

Now, stop right there for a second. Stop right there and think about that last sentence. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so…

 

Now if you didn’t know the story what do you think might come next? Because what comes next; what comes after “so “will tell us a lot about the One being talked about here. If God has put all things under the power of Jesus; if He had come from God and was going back to God don’t you think the next words would be something like, “so He called out with a loud voice and the earth quaked and He called for a legion of angels to bring His royal crown! Then with just His voice He ripped the temple curtain in two and Satan Himself bowed down and worshipped Him!”? Wouldn’t you think that is how it should read? But let’s continue to see what it actually says.

 

So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” 9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!” 10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean. 12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them.13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

 

I have an idea that the disciples learned more from Jesus on this day than most of the days put together. Poor Peter! He was constantly saying something or doing something wrong but can you imagine being in his place? He is sitting there watching the One he knew to be the Messiah washing the feet of the other disciples, making His way around the room and when He gets to Peter, Peter can’t bear it. Washing feet was the job of the most menial slave and here was the King of Glory making Himself low as the lowest slave.

 

The Gospel of Luke writes that just before Jesus did this that the disciples were arguing over which one of them was going to be the greatest in the Kingdom. Can you picture this? Here they are sitting around (or actually more like laying around) a table with Jesus and they are arguing about which one of them was the best. That’s like a bunch of bicycles sitting around the Ferrari dealership arguing over which of them is fastest.

 

The disciples were all about following Jesus. They were all about hanging out with Him and eating with Him and watching Him do amazing things. But they weren’t really motivated to do the hard work of discipleship. Do you remember what my definition of a disciple is? A disciple is someone who learns from Jesus and then teaches others with what they have learned.

 

These 12 men with Jesus were all about that first part. They enjoyed learning from Jesus. They just weren’t motivated to teach and encourage others with what they had learned because sometimes what we learn from Jesus is difficult. Sometimes what we learn from Jesus involves turning the other cheek. Sometimes what we learn from Jesus is that the first shall be last and the last shall be first or that we are to forgive, forgive and then forgive again. Sometimes He teaches us to give all we have and sometimes He teaches us to just be still.

 

Learning from Jesus can be fun. I love to go to Sunday evening service or Thursday evening Bible study and learn through others more about Jesus. I love to just be around my church family. Being at church is fun. We learn. We share our lives. We support each other. We make fun of each other. We jab each other with spoons while playing games after church. It’s fun and we do that because we love each other and our one common denominator is our love for Jesus.

 

The difficult part is having the motivation to teach others with what we have learned because teaching is not just the transfer of facts from one brain to another. It often means doing just what Jesus did through sacrificial love. That is how Jesus motivated His disciples. He showed them sacrificial love.

 

Most of you have no idea how much time and effort Morris spends up here every week. Most of you have no idea how much time and effort Morris has spent getting our audio / visual ministry in order. Morris stays behind the scenes most of the time and puts as much work in as anybody making our worship service able to be seen and heard on Facebook and he does it because we pay him so much money. Right, Morris? Maybe he does it for the glory or for the power. You think? No. He does it because he wants everybody else to be able to worship with us and hear the Gospel even if they can’t be with us in the building. Morris, come up here for a minute please.  May I wash your feet?  Sit down in that chair for a minute.

 

I believe that Jesus washed the feet of the disciples for a reason.  For one thing, I’m sure they needed to be washed.  They walked everywhere in sandals or even barefoot and their feet would get dirty pretty easily.  But this was not something one did for a peer.  This was something done by a slave and since there were no slaves with them, I’m sure their feet were dirty so Jesus washed them.

 

But obviously there was much, much more to this.  The great commentator Warren Wiersbe says:  “It is remarkable how the Gospel of John reveals the humility of our Lord even while magnifying His deity:  In chapter 5 Jesus says, “The Son can do nothing of Himself.”  In chapter 6 Jesus says, “For I came down from Heaven not to do my own will.”  In chapter 7, “My doctrine is not mine.”  Chapter 8, “I seek not my own glory.”  And in 14, “The word you hear is not mine.”

 

That is true humility.  That’s not faked.  It’s not ginned up or exaggerated.  Jesus had one goal and that was to make God the Father known.  Just like John the Baptist had one goal and it was to make Jesus known.  Paul had one goal.  Point to Jesus.  That’s the purpose of the New Testament and ultimately the whole Bible.  Point to Jesus.  That is our whole purpose as well.  We are to point to Jesus and we do that by showing sacrificial love.

 

Sacrificial love is not something that the world is known for and when they see it, whether they want to admit it or not, they know it is different.  When they see it in your life they know you are different and that is exactly what we are commanded by God to be is different, set apart…holy.  What makes someone holy?  Is it being pious, religious and holier-than-thou?  Or is it, as has been said, not thinking less of yourself but just thinking of yourself less?

 

That is exactly what Jesus did and that is how he perpetuated the disciple-making process.  He started by just attracting people and while that can be our most difficult part of this process we do it by meeting the needs of the people we meet so that they visit our church or come into our lives just long enough to say, “Those people aren’t so bad.  I think I’ll listen to what they have to say.”

 

Then while they are in our church or in our lives in any way we model, because we have seen Jesus model how we are to pray and worship and have faith.  Now, we are really starting to get somewhere with people.  They see that we are not perfect but that what we say starts to make sense and they want to know more so we start to teach them what we have learned from Jesus.

 

We give them the basic tools and set them up for success just like Jesus did for His disciples and if and when they fail, they learn a valuable lesson.  But they do it in the context of going and doing not just being and sitting.

 

Then because we have seen Jesus attract, model and teach, we are motivated by His sacrificial love that He not only showed to His disciples when He washed their feet but He also has shown it to us.  How has Jesus shown His sacrificial love for us?  Well, the Bible says that we are all sinners; that we have all done things that displease God (Romans 3:23).  It also says that the wages of that sin; what we deserve to get for displeasing God is death, meaning eternal death and separation from God and everybody else in Hell (Romans 6:23).

 

That’s the bad news and it is horrible, horrible news.  But the Good News is that Jesus showed us sacrificial love by taking the penalty for our sin and dying on the cross to pay that debt that we would never be able to pay.  He sacrificed His life; He gave it up to be THE sacrifice once and for all and just like He washed the feet of all 12 disciples including Judas whom he knew would betray Him, he died on the cross for every person, even those He knew would never accept Him as Lord and Savior.

 

So, we have Romans 3:23 and Romans 6:23 that tell us the bad news.  But John 3:16 tells us the Good News that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  “Whoever believes in Him…”  That “whoever” includes you and all you have to do is accept that He died for you and that He will forgive all your sins if you will repent and turn away from those sins.

 

There is nothing more important in this world than for you to make that decision and if you have not yet made that decision then I will be right here, as the music plays, to pray with you about that or anything else that you need prayer for.

 

Invitation

 

Well, we did it!  We made it to the end of the disciple-making process.  We have seen how Jesus did it and now we can go through the process just like He did in our own individual ways and when we get to the end of the 4th step we can check that discipleship box as completed and we can relax and sing “This Is The Day” and go home with a job well done, right?

 

We know it is going to take a while to go all the way through the process.  It took Jesus 3 years to do it and we know we aren’t Jesus.  But when we get done we can just relax and let others go through the process.  That’s fair, right?  Well, while there is some truth in there it doesn’t mean that we are off the hook for making other disciples.  I know that because we got here because of what Jesus said in the Great Commission in Matthew 28.  Do you remember?

 

“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, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

 

He says go and make disciples, not a disciple, but disciples plural and He says it in a way that we know He means continually and constantly.  Oh great!  That means that we have to do it all over again???  Yes, repeat!  (Write on board and draw arrows from each one to the next and back again.)

 

But wait, wait, wait!  This is a good thing.  Do you know why?  Sure, we want other people to have what we have.  We want them to have eternal salvation and eternity in Heaven but do you know what else we get and, in turn, what others get as well?

 

Do you remember how I started out talking about happiness?  Read verse 17 again.  “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”  You will be blessed!  Jesus says you will be happy if you make disciples as He did.  Jesus was concerned about our happiness.  We want to point to Him and make Him glorified.  He wants us to be happy.  Repeat, repeat, repeat!  That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

“Making Disciples” – Part III –Teaching – Matt. 17:14-21

According to the U.S. News and World Report, in a lifetime the average American will spend:

Six months sitting at stoplights
Eight months opening junk mail
One year looking for misplaced objects
2 years unsuccessfully returning phone calls
4 years doing housework
5 years waiting in line
6 years eating.

 

Now, I don’t know how they know that or how they go about figuring that but it’s probably pretty close. Do you know what that tells me? It tells me that life takes time. We are only give a certain amount, a finite number of minutes, hours and days so we need to make the most of them because we know that some of them are going to have to be spent opening junk mail and looking for lost stuff whether we want to or not.

 

Some things we enjoy doing and time goes by quickly and some things…not so much. I remember being a little boy in church on Sunday morning asking my mother, “How much longer?” Which is what some of you are already thinking this morning. But she would always answer, “Not much more.” When I was a little boy, if I wasn’t playing, I was bored.

 

A few years ago, I got talked into going to Bass Hall for a performance of “The Nutcracker” ballet. What was I thinking? It was going for about 5 minutes and I said to my friends, “Seriously? Nobody even says anything? They just dance around? There’s no action, no karate, nothing blows up?” So, in my opinion, just say no to the Nutcracker. That’s not how I want to spend my time.

 

Time is precious and because time is precious nothing says, “I love you” like spending time with someone. Here we are, smack in the middle of our emphasis on making disciples and we get to the part that is going to mean some serious time requirements on our part. We talk a lot about loving people around here and this is where you can prove that talk. Do you really love people or is that just church talk?  We have been focused for the last few weeks on how Jesus made disciples and what a disciple is and how we, too, can make disciples. We have seen that Jesus would first attract people and then He would model what a disciple is. Today we see how Jesus would teach them, what He taught and what we can do to make disciples in the same way.

 

Have you ever thought about why Jesus only had 12 main disciples? Yes, at any one time, there might have been hundreds or thousands of disciples listening to and learning from Jesus but His focus was mainly on the 12. Some people think it relates to the 12 tribes of Israel but I don’t know, maybe He picked 12 because that was about the most that anybody can work with at any one time.

Also, He spent three years with them. Have you ever wondered why it took so long? I mean, this is Jesus. Why didn’t He just impart His knowledge to them with the wave of His hand and go on to the next bunch? Again, I don’t know for sure, but I believe He wanted to model what making disciples was going to look like for us.

 

Do you think Jesus got tired? Do you think He got frustrated with His disciples? Do you think He ever wanted to just tell God the Father, “Hey, let’s go on to Plan B because these guys aren’t getting it.”? If you don’t think Jesus ever felt like that, I invite you to turn to the Gospel of Matthew chapter 17. In Matthew 17 we see the incredible story of Jesus taking three of the disciples up the mountain for a literal mountain top experience. Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain where Jesus was transfigured, Moses and Elijah met them there and God the Father voiced audibly His approval of His Son Jesus. What an incredible time that must have been! There was so much happening and so much symbolism and needed encouragement for Jesus that it must have been an amazing time!

 

Then…they come back down the mountain and, as so often happens after a mountain top experience, they come back to chaos and sickness and pain and confusion. Some of you can relate to that situation. So, let’s pick up as Jesus and the 3 disciples step off the mountain and in verse 14 of Matthew chapter 17 we see there is a crowd waiting for them. When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.” 17 “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” 18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” 20He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

 

I have great respect for good teachers; for those who go above and beyond to help students that don’t learn at the same pace as the other students. I can remember a few that helped me but Mrs. Robbins comes quickly to mind. Mrs. Robbins was my 1^st grade teacher and I remember her making me a custom set of flash cards to help me learn math. She hand wrote a bunch of cards that had 1 plus 1 or 2 plus 2 on the front with the answer on the back. I don’t have the cards anymore so I don’t remember what the number was on the back but you get my point. Mrs. Robbins spent extra time with me so that I would succeed.

 

I want you to get the whole picture of what Jesus was doing with His disciples. In Matthew chapter 10 we see that Jesus had given His disciples (the 12 main ones) the authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal diseases. He set them up for success. He had shown them what to do. He gave them the authority to do it and He set them up to succeed at it.

 

We see that 1) He attracted them then 2) He modeled how to do it and 3) here we see Jesus really teaching them how to be His disciples; literally how to be more like Jesus. But did you notice what He has done after He did all of that. He left them alone just long enough so they could fail. He allowed them to fail as part of the teaching process. Why would He do that? Did He not care about them? Were they getting on His nerves and He needed some time away? No, it’s just that there is no better teacher than failure.

 

In which scenario is more learned, in the games you win or the games you lose?  In which locker room is found the real men of character; the winners’ locker room or the losers’?  In Philippians 4 Paul says, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” ESV

 

The great old commentator Matthew Henry said that Christ permitted His disciples to fail to keep them humble, and to show their dependence upon Him, that without Him they could do nothing.  Don’t you know that Christ still wants to teach us that without Him we can do nothing but with Him, all things are possible?  Proverbs 24:16 says that even though a righteous man falls seven times he gets back up again.

 

Jesus then tops all of this off with a beautiful and powerful illustration about faith moving mountains.  Jesus often taught them with stories and parables and illustrations to help them learn and here in verse 20 He uses something that would seem to be over-the-top impossible and says if you just have faith you can move that mountain from here to there. Now, we all know that Jesus was exaggerating here a little bit, right?  He didn’t really mean mountains would move if we believed hard enough did He?  Do you really believe that the impossible is made possible with God?  Oh, yes!  Amen!  That’s what we are all supposed to say, isn’t it?  We, as good church members, nod and shout, “That’s right, pastor!  Preach that!”  But in the back of our minds we all have our doubts.

 

Admit it!  You want to believe but you are, like this boy’s father who says in other accounts, “Lord, I believe but help my unbelief.”  You have never seen mountains move.  You’ve never heard of mountains moving so is it just a farce?  Is it a pipe dream to believe it could happen?  Are we fooling ourselves as we play church every Sunday? Well, for some of you that very well may be true but let me tell you where you will see mountains moved.  I could spend some time telling you the amazing true story I heard a while back about the church that was at the base of a mountain and needed more room to grow but they couldn’t because the mountain was in the way.  So they prayed and the next day a company contacted them and offered to pay them $100,000 if the church would allow the company to move the dirt from the mountain over to where they needed the dirt to be.

 

Yes, there really are true stories about literal mountains being moved but let me tell you about how you will more than likely see your mountain moved.  I’m not saying that God won’t move a literal mountain for you but how many of us really need it to happen?  But how many of us need miracles just as big in our lives?  Do you know where you are going to see miracles like that happen?  When you find your ministry in or out of the church; when you go on missions with the church and when you take responsibility for some aspect of the church.

 

Hopefully at this point in the disciple-making process we have been modeling faith to other disciples.  They see that we believe that mountains can move but it’s probably not until we are actively doing what God has called us individually to do that we really start to see miracles.  Yes, I said the “M” word: miracle.  No, I have never seen a mountain move but I have seen addicts and alcoholics quit cold turkey because of someone’s ministry to them.  Do you want to see a mountain move or do you want to see that?

 

I was preaching years ago on the street in Mexico one night on a mission trip with Jody Kennedy when 3 drunken Mariachi singers came up and interrupted the service and when they finally were quiet they heard the Gospel translated and all 3 accepted Jesus right there.  Do you want to see a pile of dirt move or do you want to see that?

 

I have seen people who can’t teach or preach or barely string 2 sentences together but who can sing or watch children or take out the trash so that somebody else can not be distracted and hear the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Then it might not be that day or the next but then some day some person lays down their booze, their needle or gun or whatever it is and takes up the Bible and starts to make disciples of Jesus just like they have been taught and I would rather see that than watch the Teton Mountain range dance a jig!

 

But here is the really cool part because I know what you’re thinking.  You are thinking you can’t do that.  You can’t teach.  You can’t preach.  You can’t go on a mission trip because you can’t afford it, you don’t have time, that’s not your gift, somebody is already doing it, blah, blah, blah…and you are absolutely right.  You can’t do it.  I would encourage you to think, in fact make a list of all the reasons why you can’t do some ministry; why you can’t donate to the food pantry or write to the inmates on the jail ministry list or even visit them; why you can’t babysit the babies or teach the kids or give to the church or just participate in the discipleship process that goes on around the tables Sunday nights and Thursday nights. Make a list of all the reasons why you can’t start a prayer ministry or clean bathrooms or take some responsibility around here for the sake of the Kingdom. Then you take that list to God in prayer and you start to tell Him about it and you watch how He says, “I got this” to every single one.  When you say you can’t speak well He will bring to mind someone like Moses in Exodus 4:10.  When you say you can’t afford it, well, get ready because there are too many in the Bible to mention who were dirt poor but did what God called them to do, including Jesus Himself.

 

When you think you don’t have the talent or ability or tools, just look up Shamgar in Judges 3:31 who saved all of Israel with the oxgoad he happened to have in his hand.  See, none of your reasons or excuses are going to hold water if God has called you to do something because if you could do it on your own, it wouldn’t be faith and you wouldn’t need God.

 

As your church family, we are going to do our best to set you up for success.  We will do anything we can to facilitate your ministry, help you go on mission or help with your responsibility but do you know what is probably going to happen?  You’re going to fail.  I’m going to fail.  All of us fail.  But God isn’t calling you to be the perfect teacher of disciples.  Jesus did that job.  All we are supposed to do is learn from Jesus and then share and encourage with others what we have learned. A stay-at-home or even stay-at-church Christian is not making disciples.  Just showing up here for an hour or two a week isn’t going to cut it when Jesus asks you if you did what He told you to do in the Great Commission.  What are you going to say?  “I sat nice and quiet in the pew during worship on Sunday morning.”

 

Look at verse 17 again there in Matthew chapter 17.  Jesus says, “You unbelieving and perverse generation.”  He’s not speaking to His disciples here.  He is talking to the others gathered around and I would dare say He is speaking to us as well.  I looked up what that word “perverse” means.  I didn’t look in the dictionary.  I looked in my big concordance because I wanted to see how Jesus meant it.  It originally means to twist something.  To pervert something is to twist it.  You don’t change it completely.  It’s just twisted a little and that’s what we do so often with things to make them suit us.

 

We pervert love into just sex and we pervert time into money and we pervert worship into church and we do that because it’s easier and it saves us time.  Just going to church isn’t being a disciple-maker.  Making disciples takes time.  There is no way around that.  What is God calling you to do today?  Is there a ministry you need to be a part of or even start?  Is there a mission that you need to go on around the community or around the world?  Is there a responsibility you need to take on for the glory of the Kingdom?

 

It takes time and you may even fail but that is all part of making disciples and that is what we are all called to do.  You know, there is really only one requirement to being a disciple; only one thing you have to do or be before you can really start learning from Jesus and then sharing and encouraging others with what you have learned. Jesus simply said, “Follow Me.” “Believe in Me.”  It means to put your faith and trust in Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life; to agree with Him that there is no way to Heaven except through Him so you simply approach the Creator of the universe in repentance and ask for your sins to be forgiven.  We know that He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

 

Then we leave our sins with Him to forgive and we trade Him our sins for His righteousness and His peace and His joy in this life and life with Him for eternity. Have you done that?  Today is the day of salvation.  Don’t wait another day because you may not have the time.

 

“Making Disciples” – Part II -Modeling– John 17

'Twas a sheep, not a lamb, that strayed away in the parable Jesus told.

 

A grown-up sheep that had gone astray from the ninety and nine in the fold.

 

Out on the hillside, out in the cold, 'twas a sheep the Good Shepherd sought;

 

And back to the flock, safe into the fold, 'twas a sheep the Good Shepherd brought.

 

And why for the sheep should we earnestly long and as earnestly hope and pray?

 

Because there is danger, if they go wrong, they will lead the lambs astray.

 

For the lambs will follow the sheep, you know, wherever the sheep may stray;

 

When the sheep go wrong, it will not be long till the lambs are as wrong as they.

 

And so with the sheep we earnestly plead, for the sake of the lambs today;

 

If the sheep are lost, what terrible cost some of the lambs will have to pay!

 

Source Unknown.

 

I don’t know who wrote that but it is a sobering reminder that we as sheep have a serious responsibility to model truth for our little lambs that are watching everything we do. You may think that nobody is watching and so a little bit of this or just a handful of that is not going to be a big deal. But there is something about little people that makes them want to act like big people and so children watch what adults say and do all the time.

 

I heard the story about a writer who was at home watching his little daughter play. She got his laptop and began just typing away on it. He watched for a minute and then asked what she was doing. “Writing a story” she said. “What’s it about?” She said, “I don’t know. I can’t read.”

 

Lambs want to be sheep so sheep have a huge responsibility to care for the lambs so that they grow up properly. But like with anything the responsibility of raising kids can also bring great joy. Proverbs 23:24 says, “The father of a righteous child has great joy; a man who fathers a wise son rejoices in him.” Children don’t get to be righteous or wise on accident though. That only happens when they have role models in their life that show them how to be righteous and wise.

 

Now, while righteous and wise children are a joy to everybody around them, nobody receives that full blessing like the one that did the modeling. Nobody has greater joy than the one who took the time to model righteousness and wisdom to them. The role model gets the greatest reward because that is what they are supposed to do and doing what you are called to do is the most rewarding position on earth. It brings more joy than anything else you can do.

 

When people think of Jesus they often think of “the Man of sorrows” or someone always in pain and agony. But while He most certainly did go through pain and sorrow, Jesus also talked a lot about His joy. He talked about His own joy and how others could have joy as well. In Hebrews 12:2 it says, “For the joy set before him he endured the cross.”

 

Hebrews 1:9 says about Jesus, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." In our passage this morning Jesus is literally just hours away from dying a gruesome death on the cross for our sins. He knows what is about to happen to Him. He understands what is about to take place and how this is going to go down and yet in one of His last prayers before this happens, He prays that the disciples will have the full measure of His joy within them.

 

How can that be? Is He just faking it for the sake of His disciples who are listening to this prayer? Is He just trying to look on the bright side of things? Or does He really have joy in this, His darkest hour? I want us to read a long passage of scripture in the Gospel of John chapter 17. It is long and can be difficult to take it all in. There is a lot here literally and figuratively but if you will take the time to read along with me and not be worried about what you are going to eat or do later…then this passage becomes the living and powerful Word of God able to change your life and the way you choose discipleship. 

 

If you don’t hear a word I say, let Jesus speak to you from this passage. While we will in no way be able to do justice to this powerful passage of scripture, we will be able to see Jesus model what it looks like to be a disciple and to make disciples as He prays to the Father on behalf of Himself, His disciples and for all of us as well. He has been encouraging His disciples and now slips into the most powerful and beautiful prayer ever recorded.

 

John 17 says, “After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. 6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. 9 I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. 11 I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. 13 “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. 20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. 25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

 

In the Great Commission Jesus told His disciples and all of us to go make more disciples. So we are looking at how to do just that, spending January looking at the lifestyle choice that is discipleship. What does it mean? What does it look like? How did Jesus do it and how can we at Christ Fellowship do it?

 

I told you last week that Jesus is our model and guide for doing this and I found four ways that He did it but that we can’t exactly duplicate what He did, nor should we try. We don’t need to go to Israel and try to do exactly what He did. Our job is to make disciples as we go through our lives where we are. Last week we saw that the first thing Jesus did was attract people to start the discipleship process. The next thing He did was to model exactly what a disciple looks like.

 

I had a hard time deciding which passage of scripture to use at first because all through John and all through all of the Gospels, Jesus models what it means to be a disciple. In Matthew He prays in the garden. In Mark He worships in the temple. In Luke He models faith by healing. But in this passage…in this passage we have all of that and more. (Write on board prayer, worship, faith.)

 

I’ll get to the “more” later but first let’s look at why prayer, worship and faith are important to discipleship. Do you remember what a disciple is? My definition for us today is a disciple is one who learns from Jesus and then teaches and encourages others with what they have learned. It is two-pronged. You learn and then you share what you have learned. If we never learn to pray or we never learn to worship or we never learn to have faith then we will never be true disciples. But all three have been misunderstood and all three have been done wrong so if we want to do it right then what better model for these than Jesus Himself?

 

This whole chapter is a prayer so it’s easy to see that but what exactly is prayer and why does a disciple do it? So, what is prayer? The easy answer is just that prayer is a conversation with God. Jesus models that thought here when He goes right from talking to the disciples to talking with the Father without missing a beat. It’s as if God the Father was right there with them and Jesus starts talking to Him just like He was to the disciples.

 

Just like last week we saw that Jesus attracted people so easily and yet it can be difficult for us, so it is with all 3 of these: prayer, worship and faith. But why is prayer, real prayer, so difficult? I believe there are any number of reasons why we all struggle to have a strong prayer life. There are libraries full of books that are written to help us with that. But I think one of the biggest problems we have to overcome is being distracted.

 

We have so much going on in our lives and all around us that we are doing good if we can concentrate long enough to give God a couple of minutes of our precious time in the morning, maybe a quick thanks at meal time and then a “Now I lay me down to sleep…”at the end of the day. But Jesus takes all the time in the world and has a casual conversation with the Father. It wasn’t a long prayer but very powerful.

 

While on his death bed, John Knox, the founder of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, called to his wife and said, "Read me that Scripture where I first cast my anchor." He was meaning where he first found faith. After he listened to the beautiful prayer of Jesus recorded in John 17, he seemed to forget his weakness. He began to pray, interceding earnestly for his fellowmen. He prayed for the ungodly who had thus far rejected the gospel. He pleaded in behalf of people who had been recently converted. And he requested protection for the Lord's servants, many of whom were facing persecution. As Knox prayed, his spirit went Home to be with the Lord. The man of whom Queen Mary had said, "I fear his prayers more than I do the armies of my enemies," ministered through prayer until the moment of his death. Our Daily Bread. April 11

 

In John 17, Jesus is hours away from being tortured and murdered on a cruel cross and we have the opportunity to listen in as He speaks to His Father in prayer.  You might think it would be filled with big, long words and “insider” speech that only they could understand but what we see hear is just a simple conversation.  So, what makes it so powerful and what makes it an “attractive” (point to board) (see last week’s sermon) prayer to model to His disciples?

 

Let’s think about this.  Where do we stand in the discipleship process?  We have attracted people into our lives, they see that we love them and want the best for them including the joy and peace that we have through Jesus.  Now, just as Jesus modeled this prayer to His disciples, we model prayer to those we are discipling.

 

Just like we might think that a prayer from God the Son to God the Father might be long, complicated and off-putting, so might people who have never prayed thought about prayer from us to Almighty God.  But when they see that, like Jesus, we can approach the throne room of the Creator of the universe with boldness and pour out our hearts in our own words without having to sound like a 17th century Puritan clergyman with a lemon in his mouth, then they start to think, “You know, I think I can do that, too.”

 

Every step of the way, Jesus modeled discipleship to His disciples until one day they finally realized, “Hey, I can do that!”  It’s the same way with worship.  Do you see Jesus worshipping in this chapter?  Sure, Jesus went to the temple every Sabbath and He modeled the importance of being with other like-minded individuals in corporate worship but here Jesus worships in a room with just His friends.

 

What is worship?  Webster would say it is something along the lines of the expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.  Look at the very first verse of this passage again.  It says something about how Jesus prayed as well as His “expression of reverence” in worship that He starts off by asking a big thing – His own glory – but for the purpose of glorifying the Father.  He is not afraid to ask anything of God because of His reverence and adoration of God.  His goal is the furthering of God’s Kingdom, not just His own glory for the sake of glory.

 

 

 

All through here Jesus reveals His desire to first do what the Father has commanded and then His desire to be with the Father, to make the Father known and to be known by Him and to be unified with Him.  Look at verse 10 again.  Good grief, if we could manage to really grasp this, that we can worship and pray this same way, it would be life-changing for us and for other disciples.  He says to the Father, “All I have is Yours and all You have is mine.”

 

 

 

That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  It makes me want to go to God in worship and prayer and say, “God, all I have is yours.  You can have my family, my job, my car, my dogs, my health, my whole pathetic life because I know you love me and I know that as your child, everything you have is mine.”  The worship of Jesus here makes me want to worship.  It makes me want to say in reverence and adoration as Jesus did in verse 17, “Sanctify me – set me apart – by the truth of Your Word”.  It makes me think, “I can do that.”  I can worship like that because I want that.

 

 

 

C.S. Lewis said, “To praise God fully we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God, drowned in, dissolved by that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression.”  That sounds like what Jesus modeled here and what we should model as well.

Do you see the faith in this prayer?  Faith is the very essence and foundation of prayer.  What is faith?  Let me give you an illustration by a woman named Edna Butterfield.

My husband, Ron, once taught a class of mentally impaired teenagers. Looking at his students' capabilities rather than their limitations, Ron got them to play chess, restore furniture and repair electrical appliances. Most important, he taught them to believe in themselves. Young Bobby soon proved how well he had learned that last lesson. One day he brought in a broken toaster to repair. He carried the toaster tucked under one arm, and a half-loaf of bread under the other.

That’s a good example of how someone with faith lives.  George Muller said, “Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible. Faith begins where man's power ends.”  Jesus is not praying for anything here that is humanly possible.  In fact, Jesus prays as if it has already happened.  In verse 4, Jesus says He has finished the work the Father sent Him to do but we know it wasn’t until His death on the cross that it was really finished.  “Tetellestai!” Jesus cried from the cross, giving up His spirit.  “It is finished.”  And yet, here He is the day before, telling the Father it is all done.  It is literally as good as done.  That’s faith.  We should pray in such faith.  We should worship in such faith.  We should live our lives in such faith so that when the Bible says that Jesus is coming back, our lives model to others that we know…it is as good as done.

Our lives should model to others the undeniable fact that Ephesians 2:6 says, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”  It is as good as done because we live in faith.  Because we live in faith, our lives model the undeniable fact that Revelation chapter 19 at the very end of the Book says, “For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride (that’s us – Todd’s words) has made herself ready.”  We should model that that prophecy is as good as done.

Faith doesn’t say, “I know God is going to answer my prayer the way I asked because I asked sincerely believing that He would.”  That’s not faith.  That’s telling God what He has to do.  Good luck with that.  Faith says, “I know He can and I know He will but even if He doesn’t, still I will praise Him!  Still I will pray to Him.  Still I will worship Him.  Still I will have faith in Him.”

And when that is your lifestyle – I’m not talking about a church program, I mean when you choose to be a disciple and learn from Jesus and then teach and encourage others with what you have learned – when that is your lifestyle you will attract others…just like Jesus did.

Maybe today that lifestyle looks pretty good to you because the way you have been doing it just doesn’t seem to be working out very well.  Everybody in here knows that feeling.  Everybody in here knows how it is to try to do it yourself, to go through life trying to get peace and joy, trying to be good enough to get to Heaven, trying to make peace with God.

But there is no peace with God outside of His Son Jesus.  Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No man comes to the Father but through Me.”  He is saying to be His disciple.  Learn from Him and then teach and encourage others as you go.

Invitation

I said at the beginning that we would see prayer, worship and faith and so much more.  Let me show what I meant by “so much more”.  I said that the role model gets the greatest reward because that is what they are supposed to do and doing what you are called to do is the most rewarding position on earth. It brings more joy than anything else you can do.

 

Do you see that is why Jesus was anointed with the oil of joy, why He had so much joy even right before His death?  He was doing what He was told to do by the Father.  All through the gospels, Jesus tells the Father that He is just doing what He is supposed to do, being obedient to the Father’s will, not His own.  What is God telling you to do?  How are you supposed to be modeling and attracting people, making disciples?

 

True joy only comes from being obedient.

 

“Making Disciples” – Part I - Attracting - John 1:35-46

Somebody tell me what you like about Christ Fellowship. Is it the people, the music, the view out back, my hairdo, Ben’s hairdo? What? I’ll tell you one thing I like about Christ Fellowship. I look out here and sometimes see 20, 30, 40 people and I know that not one of you is here by accident. In fact, I know that almost every 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 (well, maybe) so I have to believe that at some point most of you were 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 view or certain hairdos? 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 telling others what we have learned. In fact, that is my personal definition of a disciple. A disciple is one who lives his life learning from Jesus and telling others what they have learned. 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 November 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. 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.

 

One thing this election cycle has revealed is that there are a lot of people who want to live and believe how they want but also want to claim the name of Jesus. I have heard several people who claim to be Christians who support abortion as a woman’s right to choose what happens with her body. I’m all for a woman being able to choose what happens with her body but that baby inside her body is not her body and she has no right to murder that child. How long do you think God is going to allow us to continue as a so-called Christian nation when we allow this to be legal and accepted?

 

I’ve heard other confessing Christians claim that homosexuality is just an alternative lifestyle. Their favorite motto is “Love is love” and that sounds so sweet. It’s sounds like what we think Jesus might say. But it’s not. In fact, the Old Testament calls it an abomination (Leviticus 18:22 and wicked (Genesis 19). The New Testament says in Romans 1, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” 1 Corinthians 6:9 says, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality.”

 

My dear family, that’s not me talking. That’s not some Baptist preacher’s old-fashioned ideas. That’s the Word of God and anybody who disagrees with God is deceived by Satan. And we have all been deceived at one time or another so we are no better than those who are deceived about these things. We have just been forgiven!

But it’s tempting to want to lash out at people who vote differently than we do. We have the moral and biblical ground to stand on and so we might think we are better than others or that we have the right to slap them down with our Bibles. We know God says they are wrong but arguing never convinces anybody.

 

So, this first step of attracting people 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 Todd, 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 part of the fruit of the Spirit is love. Part of the proof that you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you is your 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. 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 new bass boat? 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? Maybe that person needed somebody to talk to. Maybe they needed prayer. Maybe they needed a pan of brownies. 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.

 

So, for us to follow the example of Jesus, it may mean that when we meet people, we find out what they need, meet that need and then just invite them to church. 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? If you can skip the church invitation process and go straight to the Jesus invitation process, go for it. However, as part of His first step in making disciples, Jesus would get a commitment from people. That’s what we are doing when we invite them to church.

 

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.”

 

All you have to do is believe that Jesus died to pay the price the Father said was due for your sins. Ask God to forgive you of those sins and then turn away from that lifestyle. Allow Him to come into your life and change your life. It won’t always be easy. Not all of your problems will be solved and it won’t make you perfect. But God blesses those who confess Him as Lord in this life and the next. Do that right now as we pray.

 

“In Love with Jesus” – Part 4 – Matthew 9:9-10

That song we just sang, “All My Hope” by David Crowder, talks about hope. What is hope? The definition of hope is, “an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large.” We have an election coming up this Tuesday. I seriously hope all of you have or will vote but I know some people think if their favorite candidate is not elected then they have no hope for America. I saw that Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee says if Trump gets re-elected, he is moving to Europe. So, if you’re on the fence about who to vote for, there’s one more reason to vote for Trump right there.

Evidently, Tommy Lee has no hope if Trump is re-elected. I’m glad my hope doesn’t lie in who is in the White House. Why do you have hope? Why do you have an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes? Jesus is our only hope. I completely understand Tommy Lee having no hope because I assume Tommy doesn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus. Therefore, how could he have any hope? This world is going downhill fast and if you want hope, it has to be in something that is literally out of this world, not in this world. And His name is Jesus.

Now, for those of you that have already put your hope and trust in Jesus, let me ask you a question. What is expected of you? Your hope, your expectation of positive outcomes comes from Jesus. What does He expect of you? Let me ask it this way: what is expected of you as a spouse? You married that person. You said, “I do.” You made vows, exchanged rings and kissed in front of God and all your friends. Now…what is expected of you?

You are expected to love that person, aren’t you? But psychologists will tell you that beyond love, as a general rule, men need respect and women need security. Those things are expected of you if you get married. Of course, there are a million other things that are involved. Women want to be able to talk about their feelings and then talk more about their feelings and then talk about your feelings. And we all know what men expect, right? They expect to be able to go fishing every now and then!

So, what does God expect from you? All your hope is in Him. All your faith and trust is in Him. All your peace and joy comes from Him. What should He expect from you? Surely it’s not just a one-way street. Surely, as your Lord and Master, He has some expectations for your life in regard to Him. Surely He has some hope in you, wouldn’t you say? What does He expect from us?

Well, just like in a marriage, there are lots of things that are expected by God, but like love and respect and security are tops in marriage, God tells us what is tops for Him in Matthew 28. That’s not our text for today but it’s close so you can turn there if you like but in Matthew 28, we read the last thing Jesus tells His disciples before ascending back to Heaven. He has been betrayed, tried, crucified and then comes back to life and has done what the Father sent Him to earth to do and just before He goes back to the Father, He tells His disciples the main thing He expects from them. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus says, “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, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Go make disciples. Now, if you have been around here for a while you know what a disciple is. A disciple is simply one who learns from Jesus and then tells somebody else what they have learned. It doesn’t necessarily mean preacher or pastor or missionary or evangelist. It doesn’t mean that you have it all figured out or you can quote a bunch of scripture or have the Roman Road memorized. It just means that we are to tell others what we know and then they tell others what they know. That’s making disciples and it is the main thing that God expects of us if we are His disciples. It is the main thing He expects and it is the least done thing in the vast majority of churches including this one.

We have been going through a short sermon series looking at biblical characters that loved Jesus. We do this in hopes of rekindling our own love for Jesus in hopes that our church will be revived. We want revival. We all say it but how bad do we want it? It’s not that our church is dead. Far from it. But we need to get back to that fiery passion that sets our church apart from most others. We want to be known as people who have a passion for Jesus and a passion for other people so we have to be making disciples.

Now, I say all of that to get us to where we are today in Matthew 9. Go left a sixteenth of an inch in your Bibles from Matthew 28 to Matthew 9 and we will see our last illustration of people that loved Jesus. What’s interesting is that it never says this person loved Jesus. It didn’t have to. He proved it. He showed it by making disciples. He didn’t know a lot about Jesus but Matthew, the author of this book, became a disciple of Jesus and proved it by telling all his friends. Let’s look at it in Matthew 9 and let’s read just verses 9-10.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. 10While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. Let’s stop right there. You know the rest of the story. Jesus again got in trouble by the Pharisees for doing this. They couldn’t believe He would have the nerve to eat with such vile sinners, such unclean vermin as tax collectors. *Gasp*

Now, some of you know I spent several years collecting taxes for the state of Texas and I can tell you that even today, tax collectors are not Mr. Big Popular. I was threatened, cussed at, run off and hated by lots of people. I remember one time I was talking to a little old man and he got so mad he started gritting and grinding his teeth and was about to take a swing at me and would have if a co-worker hadn’t stopped him. But I never felt bad about being a tax collector. These were fair taxes I was collecting that people had agreed to pay but didn’t and they were keeping the money they were supposed to pay to the state. So, I slept just fine those days. My job as a tax collector didn’t bother me. Nor did it bother other people who were right with the law.

It was completely different for Matthew. Matthew was a Jew who was collecting taxes for Rome. Rome had occupied Israel at this time and enforced taxes on the Jewish people that supported Rome. So, anybody that collected those taxes was looked down on. But it was worse than that. Not only were they collecting taxes but they had the ability to collect far more taxes than Rome assessed and could keep whatever they collected on top of what was owed. So, tax collectors were barred from the synagogue and were forbidden to have any religious or even social contact with other Jews. They were literally thought of and treated like pigs, which was the worst of the worst for Jews and were held in the same regard as murderers.

It was a lucrative job but the only friends a tax collector had were other tax collectors. It had to be very lonely and a hopeless life. I’m sure Matthew spent every holiday alone. He had no real friends. I’m sure his family was ashamed of him and he had to be ashamed of himself. He had lots of stuff and a nice place to live but nobody to share it with. A big empty house can feel like a prison cell if everybody hates you. Matthew had never been accepted or liked or chosen for anything. So, can you imagine his reaction when Jesus walked by and simply said, “Follow me.”? There was a glimmer of hope in that command.

It is Matthew’s modesty that kept him from recording it but Luke tells us (Luke 5:28) that Matthew immediately rose, left everything behind and followed Jesus. And he did it knowing full well that there was no going back. In fact, it was probably illegal for Matthew to just leave everything he had collected that day and all the records and the booth he was working in. I can imagine Rome frowning on such a thing. But Matthew didn’t care about any of that.

Do you remember the song, “I have decided to follow Jesus”? It has pretty simple words. Each verse is just a sentence repeated three times and then “…no turning back, no turning back.” That song was written by S. Sundar Singh. Singh was originally a member of the Sikh religion but grew up going to a Christian school where he lived in India. When he was 14, his mother died and Singh had a crisis of faith. His whole family were Sikhs but in his prayers to the god of the Sikhs, he felt no comfort. He felt no real presence. It was just religion. It was a whole lot of rules but no real relationship. Despite his family's pleas, bribes, and threats, Sundar became a Christian and walked away from his whole family and became an outcast. It was after that Singh wrote the words to that hymn.

 I have decided to follow Jesus;  No turning back, no turning back.  

The world behind me, the cross before me;  No turning back, no turning back.  Though none go with me, still I will follow;
No turning back, no turning back.  My cross I’ll carry, till I see Jesus;
No turning back, no turning back.  Will you decide now to follow Jesus? No turning back, no turning back.

 

That sounds a lot like Matthew, doesn’t it? Matthew knew there was no turning back and instead of trying to be a little in the world and a little with Jesus like so many of us do today, Matthew jumped all in to follow Jesus and when he did, the next thing he did was tell all his friends. Did you see that in verse 10? “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him…” Can you imagine the scandal? Can you imagine what the neighbors thought? I mean, this is like ministering to the poor, the addicted and the incarcerated or something. Who would do such a crazy thing? Why do you think Matthew told his friends about Jesus?

For the religious people of the day, the scribes and Pharisees and their kin, these people were considered the lowest, vilest people on earth. They were literally worthless. Can you imagine feeling that way? Can you imagine being told and being made to feel like you weren’t worth anything? Some of you can. Some of you know that feeling. Some of you have been made to feel that way, maybe by your own family or even some church you went to. I have a friend who went through a divorce through no fault of his own and when word got out at his church, the leadership came to him and politely told him he needed to find some place else to go to church. What Matthew went through and what Sundar Singh went through is still going on today. This world has enough religion. I’m tired of religion. Give me Jesus!

I have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus and the cry of my heart is that you will know Him too. And do you know why? Because I have hope! I have hope that this world is not all there is to life. I have hope that no matter who is in the White House, my eternity is secure and my future is bright. I have hope that I am forgiven of all my many sins and those sins are thrown away as far as the east is from the west. (Psalm 103:12)

I have hope that I will see Jesus and my Mama and King David, the Apostle Paul, all the Mary’s and the woman at the well. I will see all those people in Heaven. Zaccheus and I will swap short guy tax-collector stories. I will sing with Abraham and Billy Graham. I will eat Mexican food with John the Baptist and my grandparents. I have hope that I will do all that and more and I base all of that hope on the promises of Jesus.

I believe that’s why Matthew just left everything and followed Jesus. Matthew had stuff. He had money. He had a 401k retirement plan but Matthew had no hope in that for the future. That was like a child’s kite that was blown around by the winds of circumstances. He wanted the anchor set on the rock of Sovereign God Almighty and he saw in Jesus the hope that he needed.

Now, when people in the world talk about hope, they say they hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow or they hope the Cowboys win or they hope they get promoted. But we aren’t guaranteed any of that in this world, especially this year for the Cowboys. But the kind of hope I am talking about is the Greek word “elpizo” which means “to anticipate with confident expectation.” It is the hope that is promised and based on all the other promises of God. And He has kept all His other promises so I know without a doubt He will keep the rest of them. So, I have hope. That’s why Matthew followed Jesus and also why he told all his friends about Jesus. He wanted them to have hope as well. He knew how hopeless this life is without a relationship with the Savior and he just wanted them to have what he had. He didn’t know much about Jesus but he knew enough to be a disciple and tell his friends what he did know.

Have you ever seen two pregnant women talking together? What do you think they are talking about? Is there any chance those two are talking football or fishing or politics? Very little. You know they are talking babies. Morning, noon or night, they are talking baby clothes, diapers, strollers, baby names, baby this, baby that. That’s all they think about and it’s all they want to think about. A pregnant woman is literally filled with hope. She is filled with “elpizo” or a confident expectation. How many of you mothers have prayed for your child’s spouse before either one was even born? You had yet to lay eyes on the kid but you had plans for his schooling and his career all because you had hope!

That’s the way we are as Christians. I have hope and I want all my friends – shoot, even my enemies to have that same hope. What better way to get rid of an enemy than to make him a brother in Christ full of hope? That’s what true disciples do. They make other disciples. They don’t just invite people to church. They invite them to Jesus. That’s what Matthew did.

But, I’ll tell you what. Inviting somebody to church is a great way to segue into inviting somebody to Jesus. My Dad just made it a habit of asking people, “So, where do you go to church?” If they gave a good response, great! Good to know. He oftentimes would ask them, “Now, who’s the pastor there?” I don’t know how many times I have heard somebody hem and haw around trying to act like the name is right on the tip of their tongue but you know they have no clue because they don’t go there. But whatever. It’s a great way to get the conversation going where you want it to go.

And like pregnant women like to talk about babies, you ought to want to talk about Jesus because He is your hope. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and no man comes to the Father except through Him. (John 14:6) Paul said in Ephesians 2 that without God the people have no hope. In 2 Thessalonians Paul said he didn’t want them to grieve like people who had no hope. And he said in beautiful Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” I want that for you today. Do you have that hope? If you do, tell somebody like Matthew did. If you don’t, you can. You are not too far gone. Your circumstances are not too bleak. Your addiction is not too powerful. Your hurts and hang-ups are able to be overcome, all through the power of the Creator of the world, the Great I Am, the Sovereign King of all kings.

Jesus died on the cross so your sins would be forgiven. All you have to do is ask Him to forgive you, allow Him to come into your life and change you and give you hope. Do that right now as we pray.