Becoming a Disciple

ENGAGE

Welcome Church!

Last week we talked about the great commission in .Matthew 28 :16 -20. Jesus' call for all disciples to spread the Good news about Jesus through out the whole world.

HE Commanded US to Go Therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to live the Life of a disciple.

He gave us the assurance that he would be with us in the presence of his Holy Spirit living with in us.

So we were left with this task after Jesus returns to the father.

This sounds like a simply and easy task right?

Shouldn't take the disciples very long to finish.

I mean there are a few of them and all they have to do is tell everyone in the world what happened over the last three years.

Most of it will be sorta crazy and not everyone will be receptive. But it still shouldn't be that hard. Pepsi is a a world- wide name, so shouldn't it be easier to spread the word about the Savior of the World who can heal save and us from sin and death, than it is to sell the world a bottle of colored sugar water?

It shouldn't be that hard to talk to someone about becomea disciple d Jesus, right?

TENSION

.Now we all know that even bringing Jesus up in conversation is something that we all struggle to do. We are afraid of what the other person will think about us, we are scared that we may lose them as a friend or maybe they will make fun of us for believing in a higher power, or maybe they will argue with us, and maybe we are not that comfortable with telling his story and being able to defend our faith in Christ.

Maybe ve aren't really sure enough about our own faith , let alone tell someone else how to be a disciple.

Well the good news is that we can take all those reasons and forget about them because when Jesus asks us todo something, he gives us the skills and means to do it.

Today we are going to look at the calling of a disciple. Not just any disciple either, we are going to look a disciple's own account of his conversion to Christ.

Turn with me to the gospel of Matthew, chapter 9 where we will find the conversion of the gospel writer himself.

TRUTH

Matthew 9:9 ESV

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

So Our First question that we need to look at is where was "there'? Where did Jesus just come from? We always have to find out how we got into the story we find ourselves in.

Jesus had just spent verses 1-8 healing a man who was paralyzed. This is the man whose friends had torn through the roof to drop the man down so that he could get to Jesus to heal him.

Jesus heals the man, but he says that it was the faith of the friends that had moved Jesus to heal him.

During this scene, we see the first time that there is opposition to Jesus' ministry, and the scribes have started the accusation that Jesus is claiming to do some thing only God could do, forgiving someone of their sins,, which he absolutely was claiming, and since he was God, he could back it up with the power of God to both heal the man, and to forgive his sins. So we return to Jesus walking on the road and he comes upon Something similar to our toll booths today.

We have a man named Matthew manning the tax collector’s collection station. Tax collectors were hated by the Jews in Rome. They were looked at as traitors, because they took a position that not only benefited the oppressive Roman government, but they would bid for jobs, and who ever got highest bid would be assigned to collect taxes at that station. Now they were not liked because they were an amount that each person or family owed the Roman government, but they could charge anything over the amount that they owed that they thought that they could get. They were basically extorting their own people for their pay.

Jesus comes up To Matthew and tells him to follow him. I really imagine that this conversation takes much longer then Matthew lets on. We can assume that Matthew has heard Jesus speak before and now he is putting the offer on the table to make the decision to follow Jesus as a disciple.

We leaned last week that one of the responsibilities of a disciple is to make other disciples.

We can see this in Matthew's own conversion story in the next verse.

Matthew 9:10 ESV

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

Jesus was a good jewishman, but he did something that a good Jewish man just would notdo.

After Matthew walks out on his lucrative career as a tax collector, he has a party and he invited all hisfriends.

He not only invites all his tax collector and sinner friends, but he invites Jesus and his disciples. Now Jesus and the boys are hanging at with and eating with, the lowest of the low.

I'm sure it was Chick-fil-A, and I'm sure that they had some sweet teas with it.

But here we have a bunch of undesirables surrounding Jesus, with the newly converted Matthew, and it looks to me that Jesus even have enjoyed being with his New friends.

But of course we can't have a good story with out on antagonist. in the story that Jesus just came from with the paralized man and his friends, we had the scribes being the ores who throw accusations at Jesus. Now we have the Pharisee getting involved.

Remember the Pharisee were the leaders of the Jewish religion, the ones who took pride in know God's laws as well as all the six-hundred plus ones that they had made up to along with the original 10 that God gave Moses.

They knew that Jesus was breaking all kind, of Jewish laws by hanging with out these sinners.

Matthew 9:11 ESV

And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Matthew 9:12 ESV

But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

Jesus knew that the Pharisee were all about keeping God's laws, and they want every good Jew to follow the laws. But here Jesus is not forcing them to become Jewish by becoming circumsized and obeying all the laws.

He was building a relationship with them before they are converted. Love and mercy are more important to Jesus than fulfilling the requirements of the law.

He knows that the laws will not save the people he has just become a part of their lives. He knows they need to realize their spiritual condition and turn to him for salvation.

He is the physician. He is the one who can diagnose their condition and bring healing for both body and soul.

Matthew 9:13 ESV

Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus goes on to quote a passage from the Old Testament prophet, Hosea. Now we don’t have enough time to go over the whole story of Hosea, but a littlebackgrow is needed, and would have been very familiar to the Pharisee that Jesus was confronting.

Hosea was a prophet that God used as a living sermon illustration. Good told him to marry a prostitute to illustrate that Israel had been unfaithful totheir God, who had been faithful to them.

Isreal had continued to offer sacrificesto God, but they had failed to live lives of mercy and love. They had focused on the requirements of the law and not on the love and the heart of the law - Which Jesus summed up as loving God and loving you neighbor.

The 10 command all point To one or another of these.

Jesus tells the Pharisee that they are No better than isreal in Hosea’s day. Even though they claim to be the experts of all things God - but they were only playing church and not living the love and mercy of God.

He even tells them to go read their writings of Moses again, because it seems they have totally missed the point of it all.

They were supposed to be the teachers of isreal. They were the leaders o the Jews, leading people in the knowledge of God, but they did not understand the heart of God At all.

Matthew spends the verses from 14 to 34 illustrating the very concept that the Pharisee were failing miserably at.

He illustrates in the stories of the ruler’s daughter brought back to life, the women who has had issues of bleeding for 12 years, the two blind men and the man unable to speak- the same compassion that he had showed to the paralyzed man whose friends dropped him in Jesus’ Life At the beginning of chapter 9.

APPLICATION

Why do we have the stories of the Pharisee, and then the healing stories all here together in chapter 9?

Its simple really.

Last week we saw Jesus called us to make disciples who disciples.

This week we see Jesus making a disciple. He takes the brand new convert Matthew, who just left his career of collecting taxes for the Roman government, Isreal’s captors, it was a position that he probably made lots of money at - but also a position that relied solely on extortion, using the threat of the Roman army to force people to pay more, sometimes way more than what was really due, and almost always it was way more than the Jewish people, his people, could afford.

So Jesus was making a disciple.

He was showing Matthew, through the bad example of the phraisee, and the good examples of the Healing of theparalyzed man, the rulers daughter, the woman with the issue of blood, the blind men, and the man who couldn’t speak.

Matthew finishes his conversion story withJesus' State of the Union address.

Matthew 9:35–38 ESV

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Jesus did what he did, and he made disciples the way he did because he had compression on humanity. We're created in God's image, we were created to be-in relationship with him.

But because of sin, and the effects of sin, humanity is lost and we need to go outside of ourselves to be reconciled with God.

The scribes and the Pharisee were supposed to be the leaders of Isreal's spiritual life, but they were just as if not more lost than the Jewish people.

Jesus had compassion on these people because they were lost and they didnot have a shepherd to guide them back to God.

Jesus tells Matthew and the other Disciples he is making that they play an essential role in God's plan - they are to tell the World about him, but they are also to love them - really love them and not just the ones they like, or the ones who are like them.

He tells then that they must love them, and they must pray for them- so that God would put someone in their path who would be willing and able to lead them to conversion, and of course as they are praying for “someone”, they will find their hearts softened and they become the "someone” they have been praying to show and stop up.

Jesus in his own subtle way is making the first generation of disciples, the first generation to begin the process of spread Jesus' story and also his mercy and love.

INSPIRATION/REFLECTION

So here we Are, two thousand some years later, reading from the journal of a former tax collector named Matthew.

A man who left a job that literally was nothing but abusing power and taking advantage of others,and he became Jesus' advocate for those who are lost and without a shepherd to take cared them, to lead them to green pastures and still waters- a man who wrote about each one of us today.

NEXT STEPS Matthew learned that every one of us is a sinner born to Adam's curse and needing to be restored through Christ.

In order to reach all the hurting people in the world with God's good news, we have to be disciples who make disciples.

No matter how long we Have been a Disciple, no matter how young or hou Old vwe are, we are called to be a disciple who makes disciples.

Let's leave this place with the desire and the motivation to take one step toward reaching the goal of takes the gospel to the world - or at least a little farther up Campbells Creek.

Let's pray