Strengthened By Grace (Experience 23)

Introduction

Go and make disciples?

That sounds like a difficult task.

But if God was not going to give us the grace to do something...

Then he never would have asked.

We have neglected this mission because we have been weighed down by the failures of our past.

And its preventing us from seeking and living for the glory that truly lasts.

If we are honest with ourselves, we all struggle to fulfill the mission God has given us to make disciples for his glory.

We struggle to be bold for Jesus and share his gospel with others.

We struggle to stand for truth and be willing to face persecution and suffering for what the Bible teaches.

We struggle to teach others how to do all that Christ has commanded us because we are not living out his commands ourselves.

If you can relate to any of these feelings of inadequacy and feel you are too weak to fulfill your mission, this passage in 2 Timothy 2:1-13 is for you.

You see, Timothy, like us, was also struggling to fulfill his mission.

He was faced with the threat of suffering and persecution for Jesus and there were false teachers beginning to infiltrate the church and deceive people in his congregation.

But, Paul gave wrote Timothy a second letter to encourage him and remind him how he would have the ability to fulfill his mission to proclaim the gospel and make disciples for Jesus.

Timothy’s answer, as well as ours, to this weakness is found in 2 Timothy 2:1-13. Let’s discover this answer as we read the passage together.

2 Timothy 2:1-13 “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful-for he cannot deny himself.”

This passage tells us that the answer to our weakness and inability to make disciples is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the main truth we must know tonight is that to fulfill our mission from God, we must be strengthened by grace.

Paul says that the grace of Christ will strengthen us in three specific ways:

to make disciples

to embrace suffering

and to endure suffering.

But this morning, we are going to focus on that first point that the grace of Christ has strengthened us for disciple-making.

Strengthened for Disciple Making (vs 1-2)

In verse 1 Paul gives the command to be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

We learn from this passage that God is gracious.

Grace is receiving something that we do not deserve.

God has graciously given us forgiveness of sins and salvation in Christ....something that we did nothing to earn.

This grace in Christ not only saves us from God’s wrath and cleanses us of our sin, but it also strengthens us to fulfill his mission to make disciples of all nations.

Because we have this grace, Paul says in verse 2 that we must teach and pass on the gospel that was given to us to faithful people who will also go and teach others.

This is the process of disciple-making, making disciples who make disciples.

We also see in verse 2 that discipleship involves three things:

It involves imitation.

If we are going to teach people to follow Jesus, we must first be taught by Jesus ourselves.

The grace of Christ, through his death on the cross for our sins, will strengthen us die to ourselves and be conformed to his image.

It involves evangelism.

Before we teach others how to follow Jesus, we must first call them to repentance and faith.

The grace of Christ will strengthen us be compelled to share his love with others because of the amazing grace he has lavished on us in saving us from the wrath of God.

It involves wisdom.

We must be selective in who we invest our lives in.

The grace of Christ will strengthen us have discernment on who we should disciple.

I remember when I was kid how I struggled to hit a baseball properly when we begin facing live pitching.

I would always swing around the ball, which either made my swing too slow to catch up to the pitch, or it would hit the end of the bat and end up in a ground out.

It was not until my Dad taught me that I must throw the knob of the bat at the ball and almost “chop down” with my swing to make good contact.

He had to take my hands and show me how to swing the bat properly.

Through his example and ability to strengthen my hands to move in the right direction, I had the ability to transform my ground outs to third into line drives into the gaps for extra base hits.

It is the same way with the grace of Christ.

We do not have the strength to make disciples on our own but Jesus came to earth and showed us an example of how to make disciples. He invested his life in 12 men that turned the world upside down.

We don’t have the strength to follow his commands, but this is why he came to earth, to be our substitute and completely obey the law of God for us. He then died for our sins and took our wrath from God on the cross, and rose three days later from the grave.

It is through relying and trusting in this grace we have received in Jesus and looking to his example that will give us the strength to make disciples for his glory.

Response

So, what must we do in response to the grace that God has given us in Christ?

There are three things…repent, receive, and rely.

To make disciples, we first must be disciples ourselves.

If you have never trusted in Christ, let today be the day of your salvation.

Repent and turn from your sins and trust in the perfect life, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus on your behalf.‌

It is through repentance and faith that you can receive the grace of Christ to forgive you of your sins.‌

Maybe you are a disciple of Christ and received his grace through repentance and faith, but you have relied more on your own strength to fulfill your mission and continue to fail and come up short.‌

I implore you also to repent and turn from your pride and trust in Christ to be the one to give you the grace to teach others how to follow him.‌

You see, we do not just need to receive God’s grace once for our salvation, but after we first receive it, we must continually rely upon it DAILY to have the strength to fulfill the mission he has given to us to make disciples for his glory.‌

We will never used what we have not first received, and we will never implement what never rely on…

Therefore, may we repent of our sin and our pride, receive the grace of Christ and fully rely upon it daily to give us the strength to make disciples for his glory.