2025.03.16 CALLED: to Discipleship
Notes
Transcript
1 There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee.
2 After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”
3 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
4 “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”
5 Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.
6 Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.
7 So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’
8 The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”
9 “How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked.
10 Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things?
11 I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony.
12 But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
13 No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven.
14 And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,
15 so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.
16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
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CALLED: to Discipleship
CALLED: to Discipleship
Last week I said that mankind’s first call was to obedience, and that since the Fall, that call comes in the form of a calling to reconciliation. The call to reconciliation is tied together inseparably with the calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
How many disciples were there?
There were not just 12 disciples! Oh sure, there were 12 initially, but everyone who has EVER been reconciled to God through Jesus and is following Him is now a disciple … a follower!
Primary Calling
May be called to a specific vocation … to a specific task … even to a specific relationship.
But our primary calling is ALWAYS the call to discipleship! “Follow me!”
1 There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee.
2 After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”
In verse 1, Nicodemus is identified as a Pharisee.
In verse 2, he comes to Jesus after dark. Why?
He doesn’t want the other Pharisees to see him approaching Jesus as Rabbi.
Pharisees are supposed to have disciples, not be someone else’s disciple.
He speaks glowingly about Jesus, but notice: DOES NOT ASK ANYTHING!
Verse 3, Jesus tells him (randomly — out of the blue) that if one is not born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Verse 4, Nicodemus doesn’t seem surprised by the topic or Jesus’ statement … instead he seems confused about it.
So, Jesus explains the difference between a fleshly birth and a spiritual birth, and
Nicodemus is still confused.
Look at verse 10:
10 Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things?
11 I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony.
12 But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
Jesus places himself in the position of Nicodemus’ rabbi or teacher. He is trying to instruct him in God’s ways. And Nicodemus doesn’t seem angry or offended at all. In fact, he seems like he really wants to understand.
Last week, I shared that the teacher-student relationship today is not what it was in Jesus’ day. The student would follow behind the teacher and try to absorb the teacher’s wisdom from behind.
Right after the Sermon on the Mount...
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1 When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him.
I HAD this kind of experience in seminary:
Dr. Dongell regularly forgot to bring a few of our tests or papers to class to hand back. He would tell us, “Uh, come to my office after class and I’ll find it.” So this train of students walked across campus behind him. And he taught as he walked, and Dr. Dongell walked fast … and he is BRILLIANT! So we all scurried to get as close to him as we could as we walked.
That’s the picture of discipleship in biblical times.
Indeed: “May you be covered by the dust of your rabbi.”
I want to follow so closely that Jesus’s dust is all over me! I don’t want a ‘safe distance’.
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CALLED: to Discipleship
CALLED: to Discipleship
Reconciliation and discipleship — that’s been the call since the man and woman sinned.
[NOT ON SCREEN]
1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.
3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
4 So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
At the age of 75, Abram picks up and leaves his town! No questions, no
arguments, no expectation beyond what he was told … he left the city of Haran.
When Jesus started calling His disciples, He called them with some form of the phrase, “Come and follow me.” Then, his disciples started calling others. Philip told Nathaniel he had found Messiah. Nathaniel asked if anything good can come from Nazareth.
[NOT ON SCREEN]
46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good be from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
And when they followed, they left everything else behind.
Today, the call to discipleship sounds very different than than biblical times. Today, you’ll hear preachers speaking of the joys of the kingdom, but not the expectations. You can watch a famous preacher in Houston talk all about the blessings of God, but absolutely will not tell you that you have to follow Jesus in order to receive them!
You can hear preachers twisting the Word of God to make it sound like God wants everyone of us to be rich, an idea that Mother Teresa and the Apostle Paul and even Jesus Himself may find a bit puzzling given their status as poor people.
Today, you can hear that salvation will be granted to everyone who ever lived because Hell is here on earth. These preachers and many others like them believe they are blazing their own path to the Father.
Unfortunately … these false prophets can enjoy worldly success because so many Christians are no longer covered in the dust of our Rabbi! We, too, have dumbed the call to discipleship down to just showing up for worship on Sundays, or just serving at a church dinner or taking attendance. Those are all noble, but the real call to discipleship is much deeper than JUST that!
The call to discipleship is a call to leave who you are behind, and be covered in the dust of Jesus as He walks and talks. Scripture’s call to discipleship is a call to be radically changed by the love of God and rejecting the love of the world!
Author Dennis Hinks: “Jesus didn't die for just our hearts. He died for our minds, hands, feet, and all the rest. (continued)
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“You can't give him only your heart, and keep the rest for yourself. It's ‘ALL or NONE.’”
[NOT ON SCREEN]
24 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.
Jesus paints discipleship in pretty radical terms in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7):
Being visible (as a disciple) and having an influence on others - Matthew 5:13-16
Obedience to the letter AND the spirit of the law - Matthew 5:17-48
Having religious activities that please God (rather than people) - Matthew 6:1-18
A radical shift in focus from worldly to eternal - Matthew 6:19-24
A radical shift in trust from worry to prayer - Matthew 6:25-34.
Dealing with one's own sins before dealing with other's sins; restraint both in "uninformed judging," and restraint in judging those who prove themselves unworthy of it - Matthew 7:1-6
Expecting God to take care of your needs; ready to help others with their needs - Matthew 7:7-12
Vigilance against false teachers and fruitlessness - Matthew 7:15-23
All of one's life built upon the foundation of Christ's words - Matthew 7:24-27
I’d love to be able to give you a prescription or a formula for being a good or better disciple. I suppose I could do that, but it would be better for you to discover God’s prescription for you. No one can make you a better disciple if you are not prepared to submit to the Rabbi!
As a beginning, I would encourage you to read those words of Jesus from the
Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 this afternoon.
Find out what being a disciple looks like, and ask God what particulars he expects of you.
You are CALLED: to Discipleship.
Let’s pray.
